Is General Jurisprudence Interesting?

This chapter compares general jurisprudence to metaethics, showing how the former is not interesting in the ways the latter is. A major part of what makes metaethics interesting is the full-blooded normativity of morality. The law, however, is not full-bloodedly normative. And while it is formally normative—it generates criteria of correctness—this is not remotely enough to render jurisprudence interesting. The chapter also notes that response-dependence—a highly controversial view in metaethics—is the obvious way to go in jurisprudence, and that general jurisprudential issues are unlikely to have implications for normative legal theory.