


































Economics, Law and Policy 
ISSN 2576-2060 (Print) ISSN 2576-2052 (Online) 

Vol. 8, No. 1, 2025 

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179 
 

Original Paper 

Evidence for the Scientific Nature of Jurisprudence in the 

Context of the Philosophy of Science 

Yanjin Li
1 

1
 Law School, Sichuan University, Sichuan, China 

 

Received: May 2, 2025        Accepted: May 12, 2025       Online Published: May 13, 2025 

doi:10.22158/elp.v8n1p179               URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/elp.v8n1p179 

 

Abstract 

Given that jurisprudence has long faced accusations of being a “pseudo-science”, establishing its 

scientific nature can provide a genuine justification for “why law deserves people’s faith and 

obedience.” The philosophy of science, as a theoretical framework for understanding science, should 

be applied to examine the scientific character of jurisprudence. Legal research methodologies not only 

align with the “verification principle” and “paradigm principle,” but legal knowledge itself also 

possesses objectivity and relative stability. Pure rationality and value-neutrality should not be the sole 

criteria for judging the scientific status of jurisprudence. Rather, jurisprudence is a discipline that 

integrates scientific rationality with humanistic concerns, and the methodologies of natural sciences do 

not fully encapsulate the essence of its scientific validity. 

Keywords 

Jurisprudence, scientific nature, philosophy of science, legal research methodology 

 

1. Introduction 

One hundred and eighty years ago, Julius Hermann von Kirchmann’s seminal lecture The 

Worthlessness of Jurisprudence as a Science shattered the seemingly self-evident “common sense” that 

“jurisprudence is a science,” securing his place in intellectual history. Two decades later, Rudolf von 

Jhering reignited profound skepticism about the scientific nature of jurisprudence with his inaugural 

address Is Jurisprudence a Science? The Sphinx-like riddle—Is jurisprudence a science?—drew 

towering figures such as Stammler, Kirchmann, Larenz, Kelsen, Kaufmann, and Geertz into a series of 

brilliant and contentious debates. Yet, after 180 years, we still lack the most compelling answer to this 

“ultimate question.” We call it the “ultimate question” because answering is jurisprudence a science? 

First requires resolving two foundational inquiries—one from the realm of jurisprudence and the other 

from the philosophy of science: What is jurisprudence? and What is science? 



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2. The Origin, Evolution, and Current State of the Scientific Nature of Jurisprudence 

2.1 The Formation of “Legal Science” 

In ancient Greece and Rome, jurisprudence bore little connection to science as such. In 198 BCE, the 

Roman consul Aelius, in his capacity as a secular magistrate, began lecturing on and writing about law, 

transforming legal knowledge into a worldly discipline. This discipline came to be known as 

jurisprudentia—a term derived from the Latin prudentia, which itself originates from the Greek 

φρόνησις (phronēsis), often translated as “practical wisdom” or “prudence.” The Roman jurist Ulpian 

defined it as “the knowledge of things divine and human, the science of what is just and unjust” 

(Justinian, 1999). By the Middle Ages, however, jurisprudence—having only recently emerged from 

philosophy—once again lost its autonomy, becoming “the handmaid of theology” (Yan, C. S., 2015). 

Although modern science had not yet taken shape, the revival of Roman law in the 11th century gave 

rise to the glossators’ school (Glossators), which shaped the fundamental character of medieval and 

early modern jurisprudence. Its overarching style was that of a “theoretical jurisprudence,” increasingly 

aligning itself with the paradigm of “science” (Lei, L., 2019, pp. 84-104).  

The First Industrial Revolution spurred the Enlightenment, which championed reason and freedom. 

Enlightenment thinkers sought to enhance law’s logical rigor and verifiability by applying 

methodologies from the natural sciences, such as mechanistic cosmology, experimental mathematics, 

and geometry. For instance: Leibniz attempted to systematize law through definitions, axioms 

(Merryman, J. H., 2004), and theorems. Pufendorf developed an “architectonic politics,” constructing a 

legal system based on mathematical principles (Masao, O., 1998). By the 19th century, during the era 

of the Historical School of Law, the German term for jurisprudence evolved into 

Rechtswissenschaft—a compound of Recht (law) and Wissenschaft (science). Jurisprudence, now 

abbreviated as “legal science,” had fully undergone the transformative influence of modern science. 

2.2 The Provocative Thesis 

In 1847, the German prosecutor and jurist Julius Hermann von Kirchmann sparked profound 

skepticism about the scientific nature of jurisprudence through his seminal lecture The Worthlessness 

of Jurisprudence as a Science, challenging the long-held Enlightenment belief in law as a pure science 

by arguing that jurisprudence, grounded in the mutable and subjective nature of positive law, concerned 

itself only with the arbitrary—famously declaring that “three correcting words from the legislator 

render entire libraries obsolete” (J. H. von Kirschmann, & Zhao, Y., 2004, pp. 138-155)—and was thus 

theoretically valueless.  

A century later, Karl Larenz countered this provocative thesis in his Berlin Law Society address On the 

Indispensability of Jurisprudence as a Science, asserting that science lies not in outcomes but in the 

rationally verifiable process of inquiry, with law’s mission being the interpretation of legal norms as a 

fundamentally rational human activity (Karl, L., & Zhao, Y., 2005, pp. 144-155). Rudolf von Jhering 

further complicated the debate by posing three enduring challenges to law’s scientific claims: whether 

jurisprudence can be falsified, whether it can be scientific when constrained by legislators’ views, and 



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whether its jurisdictional limitations permit scientific status (Jhering, R., 2010), while legal luminaries 

like Stammler, Larenz, Kaufmann, and Geertz engaged in an epic intellectual clash by variously 

redefining both “jurisprudence” and “science.”  

In conclusion, nineteenth-century critiques of law’s scientific credentials coalesced around three key 

arguments: first, law’s lack of universality, as Geertz viewed it as local knowledge producing divergent 

outcomes across legal systems (Liang, Z. P., 1998); second, its methodological unscientific nature, with 

Stammler insisting that science requires absolute methods and unified concepts absent in legal study, 

which lacks the immutable laws of natural sciences and deals with inherently unstable positive law; and 

third, its unfalsifiability, as Popper’s criterion that genuine science must be falsifiable highlights law’s 

focus on normative “oughts” rather than empirical facts, making value judgments inherently 

unverifiable. 

2.3 The Development and Current State of Research on the “Scientific Nature of Jurisprudence” in 

Chinese Academia 

The question of jurisprudence’s scientific nature began attracting attention from Chinese scholars in the 

20th century. In 1983, scholar Wang Chuansheng argued that Marxist legal theory, grounded in 

historical materialism, could reflect society’s fundamental laws and thus constituted a genuine science 

(Wang, C. S., 1983, pp. 7-12). In 1999, Li Jingbing posited that jurisprudence’s ultimate purpose was 

humanistic concern, making claims about its scientific or unscientific nature reductive (Li, J. B., 1991, 

p. 77). Scholar Hu Zhou suggested that studying law’s scientific character was less about rigid 

categorization and more about determining the proper intellectual perspective for engaging with legal 

studies (Hu, Z., 1992, pp. 137-139). In recent years, numerous scholars have sought to affirm 

jurisprudence’s scientific status, with debates between legal dogmatics and social-sciences-oriented 

jurisprudence in China fueling unprecedented scholarly interest in law as a science (Wang, X. H., 2020, 

pp. 117-126). 

Chinese scholars generally defend jurisprudence’s scientific nature through three approaches: (1) 

Methodological Rigor—Zhao Jing notes that jurisprudence employs rational reasoning, possesses its 

own conceptual framework, a complete disciplinary system, and a methodology based on normative 

principles, making it a science despite not being a natural science; (2) Object of Study—Professor Shu 

Guoying defines jurisprudence as the study of “legal principles,” while others argue its fundamental 

task is to uncover the objective, universal laws governing legal phenomena and explore governance 

strategies for human welfare; and (3) Universality, Regularity, and Objectivity—Professor Wang 

Liming maintains that jurisprudence, though serving local legal practice, develops consistent 

foundational values and conceptual systems, particularly through legal dogmatics, which systematizes 

and typologizes value judgments, lending them an objective quality in application. 

Ultimately, justifying jurisprudence’s scientific status hinges on answering two fundamental questions: 

What is science? and What is jurisprudence? Since the philosophy of science examines scientific 

activities and theories—addressing the nature of science, the acquisition of scientific knowledge, and 



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its logical structure—it provides essential guidance for defining science. The following analysis thus 

explores jurisprudence’s scientific character through the lens of philosophical theories on the essence 

of science. 

 

3. Substantiating the Scientific Nature of Jurisprudence from the Perspective of Philosophy of 

Science 

The Western philosophy of science has undergone an evolutionary process in exploring the essence of 

science, progressing through stages such as positivism, logical positivism, falsificationism, 

sophisticated falsificationism, historicism, and anarchism. Later, Lakatos proposed sophisticated 

falsificationism, arguing that the demarcation between science and non-science lies not in 

“falsifiability” or “paradigms,” but in the ability to predict novel empirical facts. Anarchism, on the 

other hand, outright denies the necessity of distinguishing between science and non-science, adopting a 

radically relativistic and irrationalist understanding of science. Surveying the development of Western 

philosophy of science and analyzing its tenets through the lens of Marxist views on science and 

technology, while none of these theories provide a perfect answer to the question “What is science?”, 

they offer a higher theoretical perspective for examining the scientific nature of jurisprudence. 

Accordingly, the following discussion substantiates the scientific character of jurisprudence by 

integrating insights from positivism, logical positivism, falsificationism, and historicism regarding the 

essence of science. 

3.1 Legal Research Methodology Complies with the “Principle of Verification” and “Paradigm 

Principle” 

Chen Duxiu once asserted: “The unity of all science lies solely in its method, not in its subject matter. 

What makes science is not the facts themselves, but the methods used to process them” (Chen, D. X., 

1920). From this perspective, science is defined not by the knowledge it produces, but by its 

methodological approach to facts. Francis Bacon, grounded in empiricism, pioneered the scientific 

inductive method based on practice—observing and experimenting first, then generalizing patterns to 

derive knowledge. The French philosopher Auguste Comte proposed that the fundamental method for 

understanding the world is “positivism,” characterized as “real, useful, certain, and precise.” In 

summary, science is rooted in empirical facts, relying on observation, experimentation, and logical 

reasoning (deduction and induction) to generate knowledge that can be tested against reality. 

Similarly, legal research adheres to strict rules of argumentation, interpretation, and rational discourse. 

Precisely because jurisprudence employs multiple rational methodologies, even when judicial decisions 

reflect judges’ value judgments, they cannot devolve into arbitrary rulings. With advances in artificial 

intelligence, big data technologies now enable the construction of reasoning models. While AI in law 

cannot yet fully replicate human arguments that balance equity, reason, and law, it can already mimic 

and replace judges in reasoning through simple cases. This demonstrates that legal reasoning, due to its 

scientific nature, can be translated into algorithms, and that the scientific rigor of legal methods allows 



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compatibility with natural sciences (Liu, D. L., 2022, pp. 145-164). Moreover, empiricist philosophy of 

science requires scientific knowledge to be testable against empirical facts. Legal standards provided to 

judicial practice must be applied and tested by judges in concrete cases, refining theories and criteria 

based on their alignment with justice and fairness. 

The American philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn introduced the core concept of “paradigm”—a set 

of fundamental theoretical assumptions accepted by a scientific community during a specific period 

(Okasha, S., 2013). Only disciplines with shared paradigms qualify as scientific. Does jurisprudence 

possess such a paradigm? 

First, the legal community shares a common worldview and values: the pursuit of justice, fairness, 

order, and liberty. Second, it embraces foundational theories and doctrines—for example, the principle 

of legality in criminal law, which remains a cornerstone of legal systems worldwide despite centuries 

of evolution. Third, the legal community employs agreed-upon research methods. Take statutory 

interpretation: whether in judicial practice or academic research, the sequence progresses from literal 

interpretation to logical interpretation. Finally, the community recognizes shared “exemplars” 

(landmark cases). China’s Supreme People’s Court, Supreme People’s Procuratorate, and 

administrative agencies issue guiding cases to standardize adjudication and unify legal application. 

Thus, jurisprudence satisfies Kuhn’s “paradigm principle.” 

3.2 The Objectivity and Relative Stability of Legal Knowledge 

Logical positivism posits that science is grounded in empirical evidence and structured by logical tools, 

asserting that only propositions verifiable through empirical facts qualify as scientific. Its 

representative philosopher, Rudolf Carnap, argued that metaphysical propositions are neither true nor 

false—they assert nothing and yield no knowledge, thus warranting exclusion from science. Scholar 

Fang Kong, in The Principles of Positive Law: Meditations on First Legal Philosophy, vividly 

illustrates the process of formulating scientific laws through the equation L = r(z), which highlights two 

essential elements: the objective natural world and human cognitive capacity (Fang, K., 2007, p. 16). 

Similarly, the creation of law stems from humanity’s cognitive engagement with the patterns governing 

societal existence. 

The sole distinction between the genesis of legal knowledge and that of natural scientific knowledge 

lies in the absence of controlled “experimentation” in the former. Yet, the iterative processes of legal 

reform, revolution, and legislative activity effectively constitute large-scale “social experiments” that 

validate the scientific robustness of legal principles. Thus, legal knowledge, too, emerges from 

empirical observation, quasi-experimentation (through societal practice), and the application of 

inductive and deductive reasoning, continually refined and tested—rendering it no less scientific in its 

methodology and evolution. 

 

 

 



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4. The Scientific Rationality and Humanistic Concern of Jurisprudence 

The value-laden nature of jurisprudence constitutes a primary reason for its skepticism as a 

“pseudo-science.” Specifically, the discipline grapples not with quantifiable phenomena but with 

questions inextricably tied to values and meaning—issues resistant to experimental observation, 

measurement, or calculation. The inherent character of legal study precludes “value neutrality”; it is 

neither a rigid exercise in formal logic nor amenable to verification or falsification. Thus, it defies Karl 

Popper’s falsificationist criterion (that only falsifiable theories qualify as scientific) and deviates from 

the pure rationality emphasized by logical positivism. Yet science itself cannot operate beyond value 

constraints. While “value neutrality” may grant the scientific community relative autonomy and 

research freedom, it risks becoming an excuse for evading societal realities and responsibilities. The 

notion that science should address only objective facts—while excluding values—artificially severs 

fact from normativity, ignoring that no “pure” science exists in a vacuum. Popper’s falsificationism 

also falters in practice: if theories were abandoned at the first conflict with observed facts, scientific 

progress would stall. Therefore, pure rationality and value-neutrality must not monopolize the criteria 

for assessing jurisprudence’s scientific status. Law’s dual commitment to scientific rigor (in methodical 

analysis and systematic reasoning) and humanistic concern (in pursuing justice and equity) reflects a 

higher-order synthesis—one that transcends reductive binaries to affirm its unique epistemic 

legitimacy. 

In his 2022 article “The Genealogical Orientation of Legal Research in the Big Data Era: A Natural 

Science-Based Jurisprudence?”, Professor Zuo Weimin highlighted the growing trend of legal studies 

becoming “natural-science-oriented” with the aid of internet technology, even giving rise to an 

emerging field termed “natural science-based jurisprudence” (Zuo, W. M., 2022, pp. 32-43). However, 

no matter how precise or rational the conclusions derived from natural science methods may be, they 

ultimately remain confined to the empirical realm of “is,” whereas jurisprudence fundamentally 

concerns itself with the normative world of “ought.” If legal issues are reduced to mere problems of 

natural science—analyzed through theoretical modeling, mathematical computation, or computer 

programming—debates over justice, fairness, and morality risk losing their significance, potentially 

succumbing to the pitfalls of “scientism.” 

Moreover, as an independent discipline, the scientification of jurisprudence must ultimately rely on its 

own methodological and systemic frameworks. While natural science approaches undoubtedly offer 

fresh perspectives for legal research, forcibly dismantling disciplinary boundaries to merge the two 

would inevitably trigger “rejection reactions.” Applying natural science knowledge and techniques to 

legal phenomena may, to some extent, address the excessive abstraction and subjectivity of traditional 

legal scholarship. Yet, at its core, jurisprudence is the study of humanity—“law cannot be divorced 

from human sentiment.” Its scientification cannot be achieved solely by adopting natural science 

methodologies. As Professor Zhang Qi aptly observes, legal professionals require training in 

humanistic jurisprudence—a stance that harmonizes scientific rigor with humanistic values, steadfastly 



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upholding human dignity as its ultimate purpose (Zhang, Q., 2023, pp. 3-16). 

 

5. Conclusions 

Jurisprudence is precisely such a discipline that integrates both scientific rationality and humanistic 

concern—combining rigorous logical deduction with compassion and warmth for humanity. We must 

remain vigilant against the risks posed by “scientism” and the “overgeneralization of science,” breaking 

free from blind worship of natural sciences while still establishing jurisprudence’s scientific legitimacy. 

This necessity stems from the fact that since Plato introduced his allegory of the cave, seekers of truth 

have shared a common faith: to emerge from the cave and pursue a rational world. This holds true for 

science, and no less for jurisprudence. In their origins, jurisprudence and science bore no connection. 

Our efforts to endow jurisprudence with scientific attributes are, in essence, driven by the aspiration to 

construct a research methodology and theoretical system with distinct disciplinary characteristics—one 

that reflects jurisprudence’s unique identity as an independent field. By affirming its scientific nature, 

we enable legal scholars to adopt a scientific attitude, thereby better grasping the laws governing 

human societal development. Only then can we formulate laws grounded in “pure rationality” and 

embodying “transcendent neutrality.” 

 

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