Broadly speaking, legal theory involves a study of the characteristic features essential to law and common to legal systems and analysis of the basic elements of law which made it law and distinguish it from other forms of rules and standards, from systems which cannot be described as legal systems and from other social phenomena. In fact, it is not possible to reach our dogmatic answer to the question ‘what is law’ or provide exclusive answers to many questions which are asked about its essential nature. The nature of legal theory lies in a study of the right which other theories may shed on distinctive attributes of law by an examination of the relative merits and demerits of the principal — expositions of the subject. In the same strain legal theory is linked at one end with philosophy and at the other end, with political theory. Sometimes, the starting point is philosophy and political ideology plays a secondary part .... sometimes the theory of knowledge and political ideology are welded into one coherent system, of course, it is true that some legal philosophies have been philosophizers first and foremost and juristic because they felt the need to express their political thought in legal form .... In short, before the nineteenth century legal theory was essentially a by-product of philosophy, religion, ethics or politics. The new era of legal philosophy arises mainly from the confrontation of professional lawyers in his legal work, with problems of social justice. The modern jurists legal theory, no less than scholastic philosopher is based on ultimate beliefs whose inspiration comes from outside the law itself.
Who defined jurisprudence as a formal science of positive law’?
