Introduction: A Framework for Analysis

Abstract

Law is studied in various ways for many different purposes. The most common purposes are descriptive and predictive. Practicing lawyers study the law to obtain legal rules and principles describing the law and enabling them to predict what courts will decide and to persuade courts to so decide. Another purpose is to explain the law, especially as a sociological or economic phenomenon. Some philosophers study law to determine the conceptual elements of legal systems and to distinguish law from other institutions and practices. But the law can also be studied to determine what legal principles and rules are justifiable or desirable. This normative purpose is the dominant perspective of this book. However, because adequate normative analysis cannot occur in a vacuum, a secondary purpose is to describe the extant common law. The combination of normative principles and description will also provide a rational systematization of the law.