Founders and Foundations of Legal Positivism

Authors

David B. Lyons, Boston Univeristy School of LawFollow

Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

1984

ISSN

0026-2234

Publisher

University of Michigan Law School

Language

en-US

Abstract

The tradition of legal theorizing that we call "positivism" embraces two principal, related ideas: first, law is a species of empirical fact; second, law must be distinguished from morality - in particular, we must not confuse the law that we actually have with the law as we would like it to be. These two elements are connected by the notion that, whatever facts determine what it is to have law, they leave it an open question whether a given system of law or particular laws within it merit respect.

Comments

Reviewing H.L.A. Hart, Essays on Bentham: Studies in Jurisprudence and Political Theory (1982) and W.L. Morison, John Austin (1982).

Recommended Citation

David B. Lyons, Founders and Foundations of Legal Positivism , 82 Michigan Law Review 722 (1984).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/2348