China Social Science Review

No.4, 2020

 

Taking Seriously the Practice Orientation of Legal Research 

(Abstract)

 

Wu Jianmin

 

China needs to create its own philosophy of law; this is the premise and marker of Chinese jurisprudence’ march toward maturity. Practice oriented legal research as a theory in legal philosophy expresses the basic standpoint of the philosophy of practice. It takes the concept of practice as a fundamental category and cultivates a turn toward practice in jurisprudential thought, while the theoretical assumptions of its practice-based rationality express its rejection of any absolutism. The basic question of practice oriented jurisprudential research is the relationship between the universal and the specific, which inevitably leads to the law’s important attribute of practical wisdom. At the same time, it implies a legal empiricist position. All of this can only be understood on the basis of a profound grasp of the concept of practice. Practice oriented legal research proposes complex principles including the dialectic mechanism of rule of law practice and at the same time expresses a spirit of action.