只要有法律，法律的哲学基础和含义就一直是人们关注的焦点。归根结底，法律是规范社会的规则体系，任何规则的优缺点都必须通过其在促进更公正的社会中的成功来判断。因此，毫不奇怪，正义在给定的活动范围内需要什么以及什么样的规则才能最好地实现，这实际上是法律的每个领域的基础性问题-学者们在探索法律与哲学的交汇点时回答了这些问题。在过去的一个世纪中，法学家在以下领域做出了重要贡献：刑事处罚的理由，私人合同中的同意含义，私有财产的道德基础，税收制度中的分配正义，福利国家，显着领域权，公民权的分配，侵权法的基于权利与福利的
The philosophical underpinnings and implications of law have been a central concern for as long as there has been law. Ultimately, law is a system of rules to regulate society, and the goodness or badness of any rule must be judged by its success in promoting a more just society. Not surprisingly, then, what justice requires in a given sphere of activity and what set of rules will best achieve it are foundational questions in virtually every area of lawquestions answered by scholars exploring the intersection of law and philosophy. In the past century, legal philosophers have made major contributions in areas as diverse as the justification for criminal punishment, the meaning of consent in private contracts, the moral basis of private property rights, distributive justice in tax regimes, the welfare state, eminent domain and allocation of citizenship rights, a rights-based versus welfarist account of the tort system, the state's right to regulate family relationships, the justness of preventive war, the moral basis of legislation, intergenerational justice in environmental law, biomedical ethics, and the values of free speech and democracy in campaign finance reform.