Abstract

This is the second volume in Professor Stone's impressive, jurisprudential trilogy. The three volumes present a progression from a consideration of jurisprudential practice, through a consideration of the theories that have been raised to justify or affect the direction of practice, to an attempt to define the proper range of application for a legal theory —a range which Stone thinks can be specified only by a close interweaving of the resources available from both a legal tradition and, most importantly, the social sciences. After an opening chapter in which he cites the confluence of both the Greek and Hebraic notions of law and justice as the two heterogenous traditions underpinning Western jurisprudential theory, Stone moves on to a systematic exposition and critical review of the major theories of justice: classical natural law, Kantian individualism, hedonistic and social utilitarianism, neo-Hegelian and neo-Kantian social idealism, revived natural law, legal positivism, and pragmatism. The expositions are obviously erudite and exhaustive within their recognized limits. Stone's assessment of each tradition is not always as penetrating and original as one may have liked, but this is in no way to impugn the expository and superb bibliographical merits of this volume.—E. A. R.