This work represents a serious and philosophically sophisticated guide to modern American legal theory, demonstrating that legal positivism has been a misunderstood and underappreciated perspective through most of twentieth-century American legal thought.

Since America’s founding, natural law principles play a critical role in the development of rights and human dignity. Commencing with the notion that rights are derived from a higher, metaphysical power over mere promulgation and human legislation, the natural law advocate sees law and human rights in the context of a more perpetual and perennial philosophy. Coupled with this is the view that natural law provides a series of undeniable precepts for human operations or a natural prescription for human life based on the natural order. Hence early court cases tend to emphasize the “natural” versus the unnatural and just as compellingly argue that the natural order, aligned with the eternal law, delivers a measure for human action. Earlier US Supreme Court cases often use this sort of language in granting or denying rights in certain human activity. As a result, a survey of some of the most significant landmark cases from the Supreme Court are assessed in Natural Law Jurisprudence in U.S. Supreme Court Cases since “Roe v. Wade” and, by implication, those cases which seem to disregard these fundamental principles, such as the slavery decisions, are highlighted.

This unique study offers a comprehensive analysis of American jurisprudence from its emergence in the later stages of the nineteenth century through to the present day. The author argues that it is a mistake to view American jurisprudence as a collection of movements and schools which have emerged in opposition to each other. By offering a highly original analysis of legal formalism, legal realism, policy science, process jurisprudence, law and economics, and critical legal studies, he demonstrates that American jurisprudence has evolved as a collection of themes which reflect broader American intellectual and cultural concerns.

Understanding Jurisprudence provides an illuminating and engaging introduction to the central questions of legal theory. It is the perfect starting point for those new to the subject.

Offers a structuralist critique of the relationship between pragmatism and liberalism in American legal thought.