Legal Dictionary of Pakistan

historical jurisprudence

The branch of legal philosophy concerned with the history of the first principles and conceptions of a legal system, dealing with (1) the general principles governing the origin and development of law, and (2) the origin and development of the legal system's first principles. "Historical jurisprudence was a passive restraining mode of thought on legal subjects by way of reaction from the active creative thought of the era of philosophy. It was a reaction, too, from the confident disregard of traditional legal institutions and conditions of time and place which characterized the French Revolution. We were not ready for it in the fore part of the last century. But we accepted it eagerly toward the end of that century when it was already moribund in Europe." Roscoe Pound, The Formative Era ofAmerican Law 113 (1938).