Introduction
Introduction
The introduction lays out the fundamental claims of the book and what motivated it, including a brief survey of the use of functions in general jurisprudential literature, their emphasis among legal anti-positivists, and their de-emphasis among some legal positivists. It discusses the use of functions to encapsulate value judgments within descriptive language and their utility in an explanatory theory, relating that usage to law’s ability to alter subjects’ reasons for action. It introduces the notions of institutions and artifacts, with a preliminary explanation of how each can be reason-giving. Emphasis is placed on the use of functions in theories of artifacts over their use in biological theory, the former being less problematic.
Keywords: descriptive jurisprudence, normative jurisprudence, fact/value gap, reasons, institutions, artifacts, explanation
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