T HAS been observed by Alan Gewirth that "jurisprudence, the science of law, has always been beset by ... categorial problems." This is another way of saying that men who talk about law are never quite sure what it is they are talking about. Of course, the central categorial problem of jurisprudence is encapsulated in the question, "What is law?" The vast literature that is devoted to this question is, as might be expected, highly abstract, so much so that ofttimes legal practitioners pass it off with a flick of the wrist as completely irrelevant to the practical tasks of law. One reason that the question is so doggedly persistent, however, is the suspicion that legal practice cannot completely escape legal theory. What the jurist does expresses how the jurist understands. Even if the legal practitioner does not concern himself explicitly with the categorial question of jurisprudence, the style of his practice will bear witness more or less clearly to his actual, albeit implicit, comprehension of legal realities. The manner in which one comprehends law depends in large part upon perspective, and perspective depends in large part upon the context of one's observations. There are perhaps an untold number of perspectives and an untold number of contexts. I shall confine this