Journal of the Charles University Law Faculty
Tristan Florian
Author’s affiliation:
Faculty of Law, Masaryk University Brno
It is time to abandon the term “právní věda”
Jurisprudence 2/2023 Section: Articles Page: 33-40
Keywords: legal science, demarcation problem, legal scholarship
Abstract: The text critically examines the term “právní věda” (a Czech term for “legal science”). The author points out that the term “právní věda” is used in Czech literature in a different sense than its foreign language counterparts in foreign literature – in Czech literature, it refers to all legal scholarship, in German literature (“Rechtswissenschaft”), it refers only to the theoretical one, and in English literature (“legal science”), it mostly serves as a term referring to the early positivist theory in the sense of the German Historical School. It then draws attention to the problem of demarcation and argues that the various sub-disciplines that make up the Czech concept of “právní věda” are not necessarily accepted as sciences. Because of its ambiguity and the problem of demarcation, the author proposes to stop using the term “právní věda”. Instead, he proposes the term “právní nauka”, which does not struggle with the problems mentioned.
