This book is about the social phenomenon that is known as law and its relation to justice. This is not a treatise on some branch of law such as contract law, tort law or the law of crime. It is about past and present theories concerning the nature of law and justice in general. However, it is not possible to conduct an inquiry of this nature, let alone make sense of the more important questions, without reference to actual legal systems and actual laws. Hence, specific rules of law figure in discussions throughout this book.

Jurisprudence in the sense used in this book has been around since at least the time of the philosopher Socrates (470–399 BC). Great minds have sought answers to questions about the nature of law, right and justice, but questions persist. This says as much about the complexity of these ideas as it does about the limits of our language and reason. Theories that have proposed answers to questions have themselves become subjects of ongoing debate. This book does not pretend to have the last word on any of these questions, but neither does it seek to avoid controversy. Its primary object, though, is to state in comprehensible terms the major questions in jurisprudence, assess critically the contributions on these questions made by various schools of thought, introduce the reader to some new insights about legal systems and make its own contribution to this conversation about law and justice.