According to Paton, modern jurisprudence trenches on the fields of social sciences and of philosophy; it digs into the historical past and attempts to create the symmetry o£ a garden out of the luxuriant chaos of conflicting legal systems.
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He concludes that “in short, jurisprudence is a functional study of the concepts which legal systems develop, and of the social interests which law protects.
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But the element of the interest brings in the question of value. It is clear, therefore, that functional jurisprudence cannot be satisfactorily developed without a complementary study of the purposes for which society exists.”
It would thus appear that modern developments are in the direction of the study of comparative jurisprudence which aims to discover the principles regulating the development of legal systems with a view to comprehend the conceptions of different systems of law to explain the origin of institutions and to study the conditions of their life.
The study is not a separate branch of jurisprudence like the analytical, historical or ethical, but is a method of the science in all its branches including the natural or moral law.
As we have seen earlier, the natural or the moral laws dominate the inner conscience of all the mankind and it is this fundamental aspect which brings the rules of natural law as the foundation rock of modern jurisprudence.
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No law prevalent today can be said to be against the rule of natural law. Almost all the laws and enactments in the world embody the fundamental principles of natural law, even where rules have been missed in any statute accidentally; the laws are inclined to apply the general principles of natural law.
It can, therefore, be asserted that natural law plays an immortal role m the modem jurisprudence as any other branch’ of statue or other law.