This white paper argues that contemporary civilization is structurally predicated on incoherent jurisprudence. While legal systems have achieved remarkable procedural refinement and transnational integration, they remain substantively misaligned with the universal conditions of life. Across history, law has stabilized exchange, property, and sovereignty, yet has consistently subordinated ecological integrity, intergenerational equity, and communal responsibility.
By tracing jurisprudence from Mesopotamian codes through Roman law, medieval religious orders, Enlightenment codification, post-war human rights frameworks, and the globalization era, this paper identifies five recurring patterns of incoherence: (1) property primacy over life primacy, (2) sovereignty without stewardship, (3) proceduralism over purpose, (4) coloniality of law, and (5) commodification of meaning.
The paper proposes a re-grounding of jurisprudence in life-coherent principles: the life-value axiom, holarchic responsibility, planetary boundaries as justiciable limits, and intergenerational equity. It outlines pathways for institutional redesign — including constitutional reform, trade and finance restructuring, corporate re-chartering, and legal pluralism — and develops doctrinal tools such as substantive coherence tests, ecocide liability, restorative remedies, and algorithmic due process.
This work concludes with a call to the legal profession to reclaim its role as custodian of coherence. By embedding life-value as the first principle of law, jurisprudence can transform from stabilizer of systemic contradictions into the architecture of civilizational renewal.
