The present age is an age full of problems. To answer the question what’s law, we should focus on the study of the tension between facts and norms. The tension is reflected through two perspectives: 1) the asymmetry between facts and norms in epistemology; 2) the conflict between facts and norms in ethics. The first is universal while the second is uniquely Chinese. The existing views of law highlight epistemology, tending to give privileges to one of the two: facts or (...) norms, and making them irreconcilable. This paper would like to draw upon two essential elements of practice and use practice to address the ethical conflict between facts and norms, and use reflection to deal with the epistemological asymmetry between the two. This is what we call “a practical view of law” which reconciles facts with norms and takes “law is phronesis (prudentia)” as its core proposition. (shrink)

This article endeavors to propose a legal matrix, the horizontal axis of which represents the structure of legal studies, which consists of doctrinal and non-doctrinal legal knowledge. Non-doctrinal knowledge provides empirical demonstration and legitimacy judgment, but only within the framework set by legal doctrine can it be transformed to legal/illegal judgment. The vertical axis of the matrix measures the extent of application of the legal studies. Differentiated from other disciplines, especially the natural science, the various branches of legal knowledge are (...) either weak or strong practical, other than ‘theoretical’ or ‘applied’. (shrink)

Practical philosophy of law is a theory about concrete existence of law which holds that due to the asymmetry between existing law and social facts and case facts, the existing law needs to be developed in a reflective manner through application and this is the inevitable process of mutation from law 1.0 to law 2.0. Practical philosophy of law is founded on the generative thinking of practical philosophy, and distinct from other philosophies of law hereof.