Areas of law: three questions in special jurisprudence

This article addresses three fundamental questions about a key phenomenon in special jurisprudence, ‘areas of law’: (i) what is an area of law; (ii) what are the consequences of dividing law into distinct areas; and (iii) what constitutes the foundations of an area of law. It claims that (i) ‘an area of law’ is a set of legal norms that are intersubjectively recognised by the legal complex as a subset of legal norms in a given jurisdiction; (ii) the sub-division of law into multiple areas matters to the content and scope of legal doctrine, to law’s perceived legitimacy and possibly to its effectiveness; and (iii) the search for the normative foundations of an area of law is typically an inquiry into its ‘aims’ or ‘functions’. This article systematically articulates, explains and answers these three questions generally, ie in relation to areas of law as such.