section_path: Philosophy of law
section_name: Philosophy of law
paragraph_text: Philosophy of law
  
  But what, after all, is a law? When I say that the object of laws is always general, I mean that law considers subjects en masse and actions in the abstract, and never a particular person or action. On this view, we at once see that it can no longer be asked whose business it is to make laws, since they are acts of the general will; nor whether the prince is above the law, since he is a member of the State; nor whether the law can be unjust, since no one is unjust to himself; nor how we can be both free and subject to the laws, since they are but registers of our wills.
  
  Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, II, 6.
  
  The philosophy of law is commonly known as jurisprudence. Normative jurisprudence asks "what should law be?", while analytic jurisprudence asks "what is law?"