John Austin (legal philosopher) - Wikipedia John Austin (legal philosopher) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search Legal philosopher For the 20th-century linguistic philosopher, see J. L. Austin. John Austin Born (1790-03-03)3 March 1790 Creeting Mill, Suffolk Died 1 December 1859(1859-12-01) (aged 69) Weybridge, Surrey Era 19th-century philosophy Region Western philosophy School Legal positivism Main interests Legal philosophy Notable ideas Criticism of natural law Influences Jeremy Bentham Influenced Joseph Raz, H. L. A. Hart John Austin (3 March 1790 – 1 December 1859) was an English legal theorist, who 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 legal systems, he claimed, can and should be studied in an empirical, value-free way. Contents 1 Life and work 2 Legal positivism 3 Criticism 4 References 5 Further reading 6 External links Life and work[edit] Austin was born on 3 March 1790 at Creeting St Mary in today's district of Mid Suffolk, as the eldest son of a well-to-do miller. After spending five years in the army during the Napoleonic Wars, Austin turned to law, and spent seven unhappy years practising at the Chancery bar. In 1819, he married Sarah Taylor and became neighbours and close friends with Jeremy Bentham, James and John Stuart Mill. Mainly through Bentham's influence, Austin was appointed Professor of Jurisprudence at the newly founded London University in 1826. However, Austin's lectures were not well-attended and he resigned his university post in 1834. Thereafter, aside from two stints on government commissions, Austin lived largely on his wife Sarah Austin's earnings as a writer and translator. Plagued by ill health, depression and self-doubt, Austin wrote little after the publication of his major work, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832).[2] This work was largely ignored in Austin's lifetime, but became influential after his death, when his widow published a second edition in 1861. A second book, Lectures on Jurisprudence, was put together by her from Austin's notes and published in 1863.[3] John Austin died on 1 December 1859 in Weybridge. His only child, Lucie, later became Lady Duff-Gordon. Legal positivism[edit] Austin's goal was to transform law into a true science. To do this, he believed it was necessary to purge human law of all moralistic notions and to define key legal concepts in strictly empirical terms. Law, according to Austin, is a social fact and reflects relations of power and obedience. This twofold view, that (1) law and morality are separate and (2) that all human-made ("positive") laws can be traced back to human lawmakers, is known as legal positivism. Drawing heavily on the thought of Jeremy Bentham, Austin was the first legal thinker to work out a fully developed positivistic theory of law. Austin argues that laws are rules, which he defines as a type of command. More precisely, laws are general commands issued by a sovereign to members of an independent political society, and backed up by credible threats of punishment or other adverse consequences ("sanctions") in the event of non-compliance. The sovereign in any legal system is that person, or group of persons, habitually obeyed by the bulk of the population, which does not habitually obey anyone else. A command is a declared wish that something should be done, issued by a superior, and accompanied by threats in the event of non-compliance. Such commands give rise to legal duties to obey. Note that all the key concepts in this account (law, sovereign, command, sanction, duty) are defined in terms of empirically verifiable social facts. No moral judgment, according to Austin, is ever necessary to determine what the law is – though of course morality must be consulted in determining what the law should be. Austin as a utilitarian believed that laws should promote the greatest happiness of society. Criticism[edit] Though Austin's brand of legal positivism was greatly influential in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,[4] it is widely seen as overly simplistic today.[5] Critics such as H. L. A. Hart have charged that Austin's account fails to recognize that: (1) In many modern societies, lawmaking power is dispersed and it is very difficult to identify a "sovereign" in Austin's sense. (2) Most legal systems include rules that do not impose sanctions, but empower officials or citizens to do certain things (such as drawing up wills), or specify ways that legal rules may be identified or changed. (3) Those threats do not give rise to obligations. If they did, there would be no essential difference between a gunman's threat ("Your money or your life") and an ordinary piece of legislation.[6] References[edit] ^ W. Ma. (1910). "AUSTIN, JOHN (1790-1859)". The Encyclopaedia Britannica; A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information. II (ANDROS - AUSTRIA) (11th ed.). Cambridge, England: At the University Press. pp. 938–940. Retrieved 5 September 2019 – via Internet Archive. ^ His last published work was A Plea for the Constitution (2nd ed.). London: John Murray. 1859. Retrieved 5 September 2019 – via Internet Archive. ^ H. L. A. Hart, "Introduction," in John Austin, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined, H. L. A. Hart (ed.), New York: The Noonday Press, 1954, pp. vii-ix. ^ W. L. Morison, John Austin. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982, pp. 148–177. ^ Andrew Altman, Arguing about Law: An Introduction to Legal Philosophy, 2nd ed., Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2001, pp. 69–70. ^ H. L. A. Hart, "Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morality", Harvard Law Review, 71: 593–629 (1958). Further reading[edit] Hart, H. L. A. (2012). The Concept of Law, 3rd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Morison, W. L. (1982). John Austin. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Rumble, Wilfred E. (1985). The Thought of John Austin: Jurisprudence, Colonial Reform, and the British Constitution. London: Athlone Press. External links[edit] Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). "John Austin". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Works written by or about John Austin at Wikisource Quotations related to John Austin (legal philosopher) at Wikiquote Spencer about Austin's system: https://web.archive.org/web/20140202205618/http://www.constitution.org/hs/manvssta.txt a short way into essay #4 Works by or about John Austin at Internet Archive v t e Jurisprudence Legal theory Critical legal studies Comparative law Economic analysis Legal norms International legal theory Legal history Philosophy of law Sociology of law Philosophers Alexy Allan Aquinas Aristotle Austin Beccaria Bentham Betti Bickel Blackstone Bobbio Bork Brożek Cardozo Castanheira Neves Chafee Coleman Del Vecchio Durkheim Dworkin Ehrlich Feinberg Fineman Finnis Frank Fuller Gardner George Green Grisez Grotius Gurvitch Habermas Han Hart Hegel Hobbes Hohfeld Hägerström Jellinek Jhering Kant Kelsen Köchler Kramer Llewellyn Lombardía Luhmann Lundstedt Lyons MacCormick Marx Nussbaum Olivecrona Pashukanis Perelman Petrażycki Pontes de Miranda Posner Pound Puchta Pufendorf Radbruch Rawls Raz Reale Reinach Renner Ross Rumi Savigny Scaevola Schauer Schmitt Shang Simmonds Somló Suárez Tribe Unger Voegelin Waldron Walzer Weber Wronkowska Ziembiński Znamierowski Theories Analytical jurisprudence Deontological ethics Fundamental theory of canon law Interpretivism Legalism Legal moralism Legal positivism Legal realism Libertarian theories of law Natural law Paternalism Utilitarianism Virtue jurisprudence Concepts Dharma Fa Judicial interpretation Justice Legal system Li Rational-legal authority Usul al-Fiqh Related articles Law Political philosophy Index Category Law portal Philosophy portal WikiProject Law WikiProject Philosophy changes Authority control BNF: cb122834666 (data) GND: 118505181 ISNI: 0000 0001 1025 845X LCCN: n81139369 NDL: 00620297 NKC: jn20000600525 NLA: 35010308 NLI: 000440940 NTA: 070244065 PLWABN: 9810587738105606 SNAC: w6tt8011 SUDOC: 028020758 Trove: 788802 VcBA: 495/120835 VIAF: 44360401 WorldCat Identities: lccn-n81139369 Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Austin_(legal_philosopher)&oldid=995880946" Categories: 19th-century British philosophers 1790 births 1859 deaths Philosophers of law Academics of University College London British legal scholars Consequentialists Utilitarians English legal writers People from Creeting St Mary Members of the Inner Temple 19th-century English writers Hidden categories: CS1: long volume value Articles with short description Short description matches Wikidata Articles with hCards Articles with Internet Archive links Wikipedia articles with BNF identifiers Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Wikipedia articles with ISNI identifiers Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers Wikipedia articles with NDL identifiers Wikipedia articles with NKC identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLA identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLI identifiers Wikipedia articles with NTA identifiers Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers Wikipedia articles with Trove identifiers Wikipedia articles with VcBA identifiers Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource Languages العربية Azərbaycanca Català Čeština Deutsch Eesti Español فارسی Français 한국어 हिन्दी Italiano עברית ಕನ್ನಡ Lietuvių مصرى Nederlands 日本語 Polski Português Русский Slovenčina Suomi Svenska தமிழ் Українська Edit links This page was last edited on 23 December 2020, at 11:07 (UTC). 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