Unit 1: Jurisprudence – Schools, Concepts and Theories of Justice

Jurisprudence is the unit that separates a 60-mark scorer from a JRF qualifier. It tests precision rather than long recall: which jurist wrote which book, which Hohfeldian term pairs with which, and which case made an idol or a holy book a legal person. The same ideas drive constitutional reasoning in the Supreme Court, so this unit sharpens every practitioner and academic too.

1. Nature and Sources of Law

• Salmond: formal and material sources; material sources are legal (legislation, precedent, custom, agreement) or historical.
• Valid custom: antiquity (time immemorial, fixed in English law at 1189), continuity, peaceable enjoyment, certainty, reasonableness, and conformity with statute and public policy.
• Precedent: only the ratio decidendi binds; obiter dicta Tests to find the ratio: Wambaugh’s inversion test and Goodhart’s material-facts test. Article 141 makes Supreme Court law binding on all courts in India.

2. Schools of Jurisprudence at a Glance

Exam tip: Jerome Frank was a “fact-sceptic”; Llewellyn was a “rule-sceptic”. Kelsen’s Grundnorm is presupposed, not enacted. Both are classic traps.

3. Law and Morality

• Hart–Devlin debate: sparked by the Wolfenden Report (1957); Devlin defended enforcing shared morality, Hart relied on Mill’s harm principle. The Hart–Fuller debate followed in 1958.
• Fuller’s eight desiderata: generality, promulgation, non-retroactivity, clarity, non-contradiction, possibility of compliance, constancy, and congruence between rules and official action.
• Dworkin: law includes principles, not just rules (Taking Rights Seriously, 1977); law as integrity (Law’s Empire, 1986).

4. Rights, Duties and Hohfeld’s Analysis

• Theories of rights: will theory (Savigny, Hart) versus interest theory (Jhering, Bentham).
• Salmond’s five elements of a legal right: the person of inherence (holder), the person of incidence (duty-bearer), the content, the object and the title.

5. Legal Personality

• Theories: fiction theory (Savigny, Salmond), concession theory, realist theory (Gierke), bracket theory (Jhering) and purpose theory (Brinz).
• Indian landmarks: a Hindu idol is a juristic person (Yogendra Nath Naskar, 1969); the Guru Granth Sahib is a juristic person (Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee v. Som Nath Dass, 2000); in M. Siddiq v. Mahant Suresh Das (2019), Ram Lalla was recognised as a juristic person, but the janmasthan itself was not.
• Beyond humans: Animal Welfare Board v. A. Nagaraja (2014) read animal welfare into Article 21; the Uttarakhand High Court’s 2017 “living entity” status for the Ganga and Yamuna was stayed by the Supreme Court.

6. Possession and Ownership

• Elements of possession: corpus plus animus domini (Savigny) or animus possidendi (Salmond); Jhering treats possession as the outward form of ownership.
• Finder cases: Armory v. Delamirie (1722) – the finder’s title is good against all but the true owner; Bridges v. Hawkesworth (1851) – goods found in a shop’s public area go to the finder; South Staffordshire Water Co. v. Sharman (1896) – things in or attached to land go to the landowner.
• Ownership: Austin’s definition (indefinite user, unrestricted disposition, unlimited duration) and A.M. Honoré’s eleven incidents of ownership (1961).

7. Liability and Punishment

• Punishment: deterrent, retributive, preventive, reformative and expiatory theories; Indian courts lean reformative (Mohd. Giasuddin v. State of A.P., 1977).
• Forms of liability: fault-based, strict and absolute (M.C. Mehta, 1987); vicarious liability rests on qui facit per alium facit per se.

8. Justice, Development and Post-Modern Thought

• Rawls (A Theory of Justice, 1971): original position, veil of ignorance; first principle of equal basic liberties; second principle of fair equality of opportunity and the difference principle.
• Nozick (Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 1974): entitlement theory and the minimal state.
• Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice, 2009): niti versus nyaya; the capability approach.
• Poverty and global justice: Upendra Baxi (social action litigation); Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights (2002).
• Critical and post-modern schools: Critical Legal Studies (Duncan Kennedy, Roberto Unger), feminist jurisprudence (Catharine MacKinnon) and Derrida’s deconstruction.

Practice MCQs (NTA pattern)

Q1. Match List I with List II: (A) Savigny (B) Kelsen (C) Pound (D) Ehrlich | (I) Living law (II) Social engineering (III) Grundnorm (IV) Volksgeist

(a) A-IV, B-III, C-II, D-I  (b) A-III, B-IV, C-I, D-II  (c) A-IV, B-II, C-III, D-I  (d) A-II, B-III, C-IV, D-I

Q2. In Hohfeld’s scheme, the correlative of “power” is: (a) duty (b) liability (c) disability (d) no-right

Q3. Assertion (A): A finder of lost goods has a title good against everyone except the true owner. Reason (R): Possession is prima facie evidence of ownership.

(a) Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A  (b) Both are true, but R is not the correct explanation  (c) A is true, R is false  (d) A is false, R is true

Q4. Arrange in chronological order: (I) A Theory of Justice (II) Ancient Law (III) The Concept of Law (IV) Anarchy, State, and Utopia

(a) II, III, I, IV  (b) III, II, I, IV  (c) II, I, III, IV  (d) II, III, IV, I

Q5. Which case held the Guru Granth Sahib to be a juristic person? (a) Yogendra Nath Naskar (b) Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee v. Som Nath Dass (c) M. Siddiq v. Mahant Suresh Das (d) Animal Welfare Board v. A. Nagaraja

Answer key: Q1 (a), Q2 (b), Q3 (a), Q4 (a), Q5 (b)

Syllabus reference: UGC NET Law (code 58), Unit I – Jurisprudence (https://www.ugcnetonline.in/syllabus-new.php).

Disclaimer: This study material is for educational and exam-preparation purposes only.  Facts and figures are based on sources available as of October 2026; aspirants should verify them against the latest official syllabus, notifications and standard textbooks before the exam.