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John Austin (3 March 1790 – 1 December 1859) was an English legal theorist who posthumously influenced British and American law with an analytical approach to jurisprudence and a theory of legal positivism. [1] Austin opposed traditional approaches of "natural law", arguing against any need for connections between law and morality. Human ...
The British legal positivism hitherto mentioned was founded on empiricism; by contrast, legal positivism was founded on the transcendental idealism of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Whereas British legal positivists regard law as distinct from morals, their Germanic counterparts regard law as separate from both fact and morals.
The Province of Jurisprudence Determined is a book written by John Austin, first published in 1832, in which he sets out his theory of law generally known as the 'command theory'. Austin believed that the science of general jurisprudence consisted in the clarification and arrangement of fundamental legal notions.
John Austin and Jeremy Bentham were early legal positivists who sought to provide a descriptive account of law that describes the law as it is. Austin explained the descriptive focus for legal positivism by saying, "The existence of law is one thing; its merit and demerit another.
The Concept of Law is a 1961 book by the legal philosopher H. L. A. Hart and his most famous work. [1] The Concept of Law presents Hart's theory of legal positivism—the view that laws are rules made by humans and that there is no inherent or necessary connection between law and morality—within the framework of analytic philosophy.
In Hart's initial paper, "Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals", he establishes that the "Command Theory" perspective of Legal Positivism, which was stated by John Austin and holds that laws are commands to human beings, is inadequate as it does not accurately represent the nature of laws. [4]
Analytical jurisprudence is not to be mistaken for legal formalism (the idea that legal reasoning is or can be modelled as a mechanical, algorithmic process). Indeed, it was the analytical jurists who first pointed out that legal formalism is fundamentally mistaken as a theory of law.
The Concept of Law developed a sophisticated view of legal positivism. Among the many ideas developed in this book are: A critique of John Austin's theory that law is the command of the sovereign backed by the threat of punishment.