Page:EB1911 - Volume 15.djvu/598

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JURIEU—JURISPRUDENCE
571

Admiral Jurien; La Marine d’autrefois (1865), largely autobiographical; and La Marine d’aujourd’hui (1872). In 1866 he was elected a member of the Academy.


JURIEU, PIERRE (1637–1713), French Protestant divine, was born at Mer, in Orléanais, where his father was a Protestant pastor. He studied at Saumur and Sedan under his grandfather, Pierre Dumoulin, and under Leblanc de Beaulieu. After completing his studies in Holland and England, Jurieu received Anglican ordination; returning to France he was ordained again and succeeded his father as pastor of the church at Mer. Soon after this he published his first work, Examen de livre de la réunion du Christianisme (1671). In 1674 his Traité de la dévotion led to his appointment as professor of theology and Hebrew at Sedan, where he soon became also pastor. A year later he published his Apologie pour la morale des Réformés. He obtained a high reputation, but his work was impaired by his controversial temper, which frequently developed into an irritated fanaticism, though he was always entirely sincere. He was called by his adversaries “the Goliath of the Protestants.” On the suppression of the academy of Sedan in 1681, Jurieu received an invitation to a church at Rouen, but, afraid to remain in France on account of his forthcoming work, La Politique du clergé de France, he went to Holland and was pastor of the Walloon church of Rotterdam till his death on the 11th of January 1713. He was also professor at the école illustre. Jurieu did much to help those who suffered by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). He himself turned for consolation to the Apocalypse, and succeeded in persuading himself (Accomplissement des prophéties, 1686) that the overthrow of Antichrist (i.e. the papal church) would take place in 1689. H. M. Baird says that “this persuasion, however fanciful the grounds on which it was based, exercised no small influence in forwarding the success of the designs of William of Orange in the invasion of England.” Jurieu defended the doctrines of Protestantism with great ability against the attacks of Antoine Arnauld, Pierre Nicole and Bossuet, but was equally ready to enter into dispute with his fellow Protestant divines (with Louis Du Moulin and Claude Payon, for instance) when their opinions differed from his own even on minor matters. The bitterness and persistency of his attacks on his colleague Pierre Bayle led to the latter being deprived of his chair in 1693.

One of Jurieu’s chief works is Lettres pastorales adressées aux fidèles de France (3 vols., Rotterdam, 1686–1687; Eng. trans., 1689), which, notwithstanding the vigilance of the police, found its way into France and produced a deep impression on the Protestant population. His last important work was the Histoire critique des dogmes et des cultes (1704; Eng. trans., 1715). He wrote a great number of controversial works.

See the article in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie; also H. M. Baird, The Huguenots and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1895).


JURIS, a tribe of South American Indians, formerly occupying the country between the rivers Iça (lower Putumayo) and Japura, north-western Brazil. In ancient days they were the most powerful tribe of the district, but in 1820 their numbers did not exceed 2000. Owing to inter-marrying, the Juris are believed to have been extinct for half a century. They were closely related to the Passēs, and were like them a fair-skinned, finely built people with quite European features.


JURISDICTION, in general, the exercise of lawful authority, especially by a court or a judge; and so the extent or limits within which such authority is exercisable. Thus each court has its appropriate jurisdiction; in the High Court of Justice in England administration actions are brought in the chancery division, salvage actions in the admiralty, &c. The jurisdiction of a particular court is often limited by statute, as that of a county court, which is local and is also limited in amount. In international law jurisdiction has a wider meaning, namely, the rights exercisable by a state within the bounds of a given space. This is frequently referred to as the territorial theory of jurisdiction. (See International Law; International Law, Private.)


JURISPRUDENCE (Lat. jurisprudentia, knowledge of law, from jus, right, and prudentia, from providere, to foresee), the general term for “the formal science of positive law” (T. E. Holland); see Law. The essential principles involved are discussed below and in Jurisprudence, Comparative; the details of particular laws or sorts of law (Contract, &c.) and of individual national systems of law (English Law, &c.) being dealt with in separate articles.

The human race may be conceived as parcelled out into a number of distinct groups or societies, differing greatly in size and circumstances, in physical and moral characteristics of all kinds. But they all resemble each other in that they reveal on examination certain rules of conduct in accordance with which the relations of the members inter se are governed. Each society has its own system of laws, and all the systems, so far as they are known, constitute the appropriate subject matter of jurisprudence. The jurist may deal with it in the following ways. He may first of all examine the leading conceptions common to all the systems, or in other words define the leading terms common to them all. Such are the terms law itself, right, duty, property, crime, and so forth, which, or their equivalents, may, notwithstanding delicate differences of connotation, be regarded as common terms in all systems. That kind of inquiry is known in England as analytical jurisprudence. It regards the conceptions with which it deals as fixed or stationary, and aims at expressing them distinctly and exhibiting their logical relations with each other. What is really meant by a right and by a duty, and what is the true connexion between a right and a duty, are types of the questions proper to this inquiry. Shifting our point of view, but still regarding systems of law in the mass, we may consider them, not as stationary, but as changeable and changing, we may ask what general features are exhibited by the record of the change. This, somewhat crudely put, may serve to indicate the field of historical or comparative jurisprudence. In its ideal condition it would require an accurate record of the history of all legal systems as its material. But whether the material be abundant or scanty the method is the same. It seeks the explanation of institutions and legal principles in the facts of history. Its aim is to show how a given rule came to be what it is. The legislative source—the emanation of the rule from a sovereign authority—is of no importance here; what is important is the moral source—the connexion of the rule with the ideas prevalent during contemporary periods. This method, it is evident, involves not only a comparison of successive stages in the history of the same system, but a comparison of different systems, of the Roman with the English, of the Hindu with the Irish, and so on. The historical method as applied to law may be regarded as a special example of the method of comparison. The comparative method is really employed in all generalizations about law; for, although the analysis of legal terms might be conducted with exclusive reference to one system, the advantage of testing the result by reference to other systems is obvious. But, besides the use of comparison for purposes of analysis and in tracing the phenomena of the growth of laws, it is evident that for the purposes of practical legislation the comparison of different systems may yield important results. Laws are contrivances for bringing about certain definite ends, the larger of which are identical in all systems. The comparison of these contrivances not only serves to bring their real object, often obscured as it is in details, into clearer view, but enables legislators to see where the contrivances are deficient, and how they may be improved.

The “science of law,” as the expression is generally used, means the examination of laws in general in one or other of the ways just indicated. It means an investigation of laws which exist or have existed in some given society in fact—in other words, positive laws; and it means an examination not limited to the exposition of particular systems. Analytical jurisprudence is in England associated chiefly with the name of John Austin (q.v.), whose Province of Jurisprudence Determined systematized and completed the work begun in England by Hobbes, and continued at a later date and from a different point of view by Bentham.

Austin’s first position is to distinguish between laws properly so called and laws improperly so called. In any of the older writers on law, we find the various senses in which the word is