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How should socio‐legal studies view jurisprudence, the legal theory of jurists? Jurisprudence's task is to promote law as a socially valuable idea taking various forms in different times and places. As a value‐oriented and context‐focused enterprise, it should draw on the social sciences to make its inquiries relevant in a changing socio‐legal world. Correspondingly, socio‐legal research needs theory to link its empirical inquiries to an overall sense of what can be hoped for from law as a social phenomenon. In different ways, jurisprudence and socio‐legal inquiry should help to theorize the nature of legal practice and legal experience. They are necessarily distinct enterprises with contrasting orientations, but they can aid each other in important ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]