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1 Introduction
The defining project of general or conceptual jurisprudence—i.e., the conceptual analysis of law—is to provide philosophically rigorous explications of various concepts that figure prominently in discourse about law. That is, conceptual jurisprudence is concerned with giving an explication of the nature of law and other important legal practices. While many words, such as “chess,” do not pick out concepts that seem important enough to merit a deep philosophical analysis, this is not true of the concept of law. The practices characterized as “legal” or involving “law” are of great moral and prudential significance; persons are incarcerated, fined, required to pay compensation for injuries caused by legally culpable behavior, and even executed for violating the law. It is a matter of clear practical importance that we ensure our practices satisfy rigorous norms of political morality, and we cannot understand what norms apply without an adequate understanding of the concept of law.
This essay seeks to provide an accessible, but fairly comprehensive, introduction to conceptual theorizing about law. To this end, the essay will discuss the nature and methodology of conceptual analysis, the relationships of conceptual analysis to metaphysics and to epistemology, and the practical significance of conceptual analysis.
2 Types of Theorizing about Law
Theorizing about law covers a range of topics. Most theorizing in law probably seeks to ascertain the content of relevant law on issues where the reasons fall fairly evenly on both sides; such articles strive for results that can be used by lawyers and judges to guide their deliberations. Some law review articles are concerned with defending a claim about what the law should, for non-moral practical or moral reasons, be on a particular issue. Others are concerned with justifying certain areas of law; with identifying the foundational principles that purport to determine the content of more specific norms; or with clarifying the meaning of certain terms. Yet others are concerned with explaining the nature of certain legal practices.
Despite this wide variety of interests on matters related to law, theorizing about law can usefully be divided into three rough categories. Empirical legal theory is usually concerned with identifying or explaining certain features or properties of existing legal systems; such theory is, at least, descriptive in character and focuses on