Jurisprudence and Validity

The relationship between law and philosophy and their respective discourses has never been harmonious. Just as Plato wanted to throw the poets out of his Republic on the basis of their tendency to corrupt, the law as a discipline has not been overwhelmed by those whose Platonic fervor would purify their enterprise and set them straight. The difference between legal procedure and philosophical-political reflection has not been easy to reconcile. Hobbes argued for the virtues of sovereignty against the self-regulating legal discipline that Lord Coke represented as having confidence in the practical orientation of "Juris prudentia," Blackstone tried to rescue the legal discipline from the Inns of Court, and Hegel lectured Hugo on the differences between the historical and the philosophical approaches to the study of law.