The political foundation of law and the need for theory with practical value

This book was originally written as a Ph.D. thesis submitted to the Faculty of Law, University of Fribourg, Switzerland, in 1992. It examines the legal, economic, and political theories of two jurisprudential scholars: Ronald Dworkin and Roberto Unger. The methodology measures the value of the theories against a simplifying assumption: What is the potential of these theories to describe accurately and/or to predict reliably the development of law in the United States and in foreign jurisdictions. The conclusion is that the theoretical constructs have neither explanatory authority nor predictability reliability. While the study reaches this conclusion, nevertheless, the book gives a valuable and global description of these theories. The author finds that the jurisprudential theory of "economic analysis" provides a powerful method to evaluate the practical effects of legal rules and to explain evolution of legal domains.

John JA Burke
Author







in 1992,