---
title: "Jurisprudence"
chunk: 8/8
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisprudence"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:58:04.446884+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

John Rawls was an American philosopher; a professor of political philosophy at Harvard University; and author of A Theory of Justice (1971), Political Liberalism, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, and The Law of Peoples. He is widely considered one of the most important English-language political philosophers of the 20th century. His theory of justice uses a method called "original position" to ask us which principles of justice we would choose to regulate the basic institutions of our society if we were behind a "veil of ignorance". Imagine we do not know who we are—our race, sex, wealth, status, class, or any distinguishing feature—so that we would not be biased in our own favour. Rawls argued from this "original position" that we would choose the same political liberties for everyone, like freedom of speech, the right to vote, and so on. Also, we would choose a system with only inequality because it provides sufficient incentives for the economic well-being of all of society, especially the poorest. This is Rawls's famous "difference principle". Justice is fairness, in the sense that the fairness of the original position of choice guarantees the fairness of the principles chosen in that position.
There are many other normative approaches to the philosophy of law, including constitutionalism, critical legal studies, and libertarian theories of law.

== Experimental jurisprudence ==

Experimental jurisprudence seeks to investigate the content of legal concepts using the methods of social science, unlike the philosophical methods of traditional jurisprudence.

== List of philosophers of law ==

== See also ==

== References ==

=== Citations ===

=== Notes ===

== Bibliography ==

== Further reading ==

== External links ==

LII Law about ... Jurisprudence.
The Roman Law Library, incl. Responsa prudentium by Professor Yves Lassard and Alexandr Koptev.
Evgeny Pashukanis - General Theory of Law and Marxism.
Internet Encyclopedia: Philosophy of Law.
The Opticon: Online Repository of Materials covering the Spectrum of U.S. Jurisprudence.
Bibliography on the Philosophy of Law. Peace Palace Library