British Positive School; the Jurisprudence of Autonomy of Law

Abstract

Law is the command of sovereign backed by sanction. It is also called British Positivism, which emerged with the rejection of natural law school. It totally separates law from morality. Morality is not a subject matter of law because morality is guided by emotions and self created values. British school has accepted various dimensions of positivism i.e. imperative theory, analytical theory, normative theory and legal system theory. Austin and Bentham are the supporter of imperative theory, HLA Hart is the devotee of analytical theory, Kelson is the proponent of normative theory and Joseph Raz is the follower of legal system theory. Although, Kelson and Joseph Raz are not from British origin, they contributed in line of British School of Thought. Kelson is from Vienna and Joseph Raz is from Jerusalem. Raz contributed for British School of Thought by teaching and writing. The divorce tradition of law and morality began with David Hume in philosophy. He burrowed it from Sextus Empiricus, a Greek philosopher. This tradition was applied in law by Bentham. He classified jurisprudence as censorial and expositorial jurisprudence but censorial jurisprudence is not a part of legal philosophy. However, Austin is the father of British Positive School because his publication appeared in the market prior than Bentham’s writing. HLA Hart analyses law with the union of primary and secondary rules and Kelson presents law as the hierarchy of norms with the domination of basic norms. Finally, Joseph Raz presents legal system as normative, institutional and coercive characters with the analysis of problem of existence, identity, structures and content.