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Legal Philosophy
Philosophy of law is a branch of philosophy that examines the nature of law and law's relationship to other systems of norms, especially ethics and political philosophy. It asks questions like "What is law?", "What are the criteria for legal validity?", and "What is the relationship between law and morality?" Philosophy of law and jurisprudence are often used interchangeably, though jurisprudence sometimes encompasses forms of reasoning that fit into economics or sociology. Philosophy of law can be sub-divided into analytical jurisprudence, and normative jurisprudence. Analytical jurisprudence aims to define what law is and what it is not by identifying law's essential features. Normative jurisprudence investigates both the non-legal norms that shape law and the legal norms that are generated by law and guide human action. Analytical jurisprudence Unlike experimental jurisprudence, which investigates the content our folk legal concepts using the methods of social science, analy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some sources claim the term was coined by Pythagoras ( BCE), although this theory is disputed by some. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument, and systematic presentation. in . Historically, ''philosophy'' encompassed all bodies of knowledge and a practitioner was known as a '' philosopher''."The English word "philosophy" is first attested to , meaning "knowledge, body of knowledge." " natural philosophy," which began as a discipline in ancient India and Ancient Greece, encompasses astronomy, medicine, and physics. For example, Newton's 1687 ''Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy'' later became classified as a book of physics. In the 19th century, the growth of modern research ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Austin (legal Philosopher)
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. 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. Life and work 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham (; 15 February 1748 [Old Style and New Style dates, O.S. 4 February 1747] – 6 June 1832) was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism. Bentham defined as the "fundamental axiom" of his philosophy the principle that "it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong." He became a leading theorist in Anglo-Americans, Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism. He advocated Individualism, individual and economic freedoms, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce, and (in an unpublished essay) the decriminalising of homosexual acts. He called for the abolition of abolitionism, slavery, capital punishment#Abolition of capital punishment, capital punishment and physical punishment, including that of children. He has also become known as an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Utilitarianism
In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals. Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different characterizations, the basic idea behind all of them is, in some sense, to maximize utility, which is often defined in terms of well-being or related concepts. For instance, Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, described ''utility'' as: That property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness ... rto prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered. Utilitarianism is a version of consequentialism, which states that the consequences of any action are the only standard of right and wrong. Unlike other forms of consequentialism, such as egoism and altruism, utilitarianism considers the interests of all sentient beings equally ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hart–Dworkin Debate
The Hart–Dworkin debate is a debate in legal philosophy between H. L. A. Hart and Ronald Dworkin. At the heart of the debate lies a Dworkinian critique of Hartian legal positivism, specifically, the theory presented in Hart's book ''The Concept of Law ''The Concept of Law'' is a 1961 book by the legal philosopher H. L. A. Hart and his most famous work. ''The Concept of Law'' presents Hart's theory of legal positivism—the view that laws are rules made by humans and that there is ...''. While Hart insists that judges are within bounds to legislate on the basis of rules of law, Dworkin strives to show that in these cases, judges work from a set of "principles" which they use to formulate judgments, and that these principles either form the basis, or can be extrapolated from the present rules. See also * Hart–Fuller debate References The "Hart-Dworkin" Debate: A Short Guide for the PerplexedBeyond the Hart/Dworkin Debate: The Methodology Problem in Ju ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Law's Empire
''Law's Empire'' is a 1986 text in legal philosophy by Ronald Dworkin, in which the author continues his criticism of the philosophy of legal positivism as promoted by H.L.A. Hart during the middle to late 20th century. The book introduces Dworkin's Judge Hercules as an idealized version of a jurist with extraordinary legal skills who is able to challenge various predominating schools of legal interpretation and legal hermeneutics prominent throughout the 20th century. Judge Hercules is eventually challenged by Judge Hermes, another idealized version of a jurist who is affected by an affinity to respecting historical legal meaning arguments which do not affect Judge Hercules in the same manner. Judge Hermes' theory of legal interpretation is found by Dworkin in the end to be inferior to the approach of Judge Hercules. Background Much of the twentieth century in legal philosophy has been characterized by the confrontation of legal positivism with natural law theory as being among ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ronald Dworkin
Ronald Myles Dworkin (; December 11, 1931 – February 14, 2013) was an American philosopher, jurist, and scholar of United States constitutional law. At the time of his death, he was Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law and Philosophy at New York University and Professor of Jurisprudence at University College London. Dworkin had taught previously at Yale Law School and the University of Oxford, where he was the Professor of Jurisprudence, successor to philosopher H.L.A. Hart. An influential contributor to both philosophy of law and political philosophy, Dworkin received the 2007 Holberg International Memorial Prize in the Humanities for "his pioneering scholarly work" of "worldwide impact." According to a survey in ''The Journal of Legal Studies'', Dworkin was the second most-cited American legal scholar of the twentieth century. After his death, the Harvard legal scholar Cass Sunstein said Dworkin was "one of the most important legal philosophers of the last 100 years. He m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Interpretivism (legal)
Interpretivism is a school of thought in contemporary jurisprudence and the philosophy of law. Overview The main claims of interpretivism are that *Law is not a set of given data, conventions or physical facts, but what lawyers aim to construct or obtain in their practice. This marks a first difference between interpretivism and legal positivism. But the refusal that law be a set of ''given'' entities opposes interpretivism to natural law too. *There is no separation between law and morality, although there are differences. This is not in accordance with the main claim of legal positivism. *Law is not immanent in nature nor do legal values and principles exist independently and outside of the legal practice itself. This is the opposite of the main claim of natural law theory. In the English-speaking world, interpretivism is usually identified with Ronald Dworkin's thesis on the nature of law as discussed in his text titled ''Law's Empire'', which is sometimes seen as a third ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Axel Hägerström
Axel Anders Theodor Hägerström (6 September 1868, Vireda – 7 July 1939, Uppsala) was a Swedish philosopher. Born in Vireda, Jönköping County, Sweden, he was the son of a Church of Sweden pastor. As student at Uppsala University, he gave up theology for a career in philosophy. Teaching there from 1893 until his retirement in 1933, he attacked the then dominant philosophical idealism of the followers of Christopher Jacob Boström (1797-1866). He is best known as a founder of the (quasi-) positivistic Uppsala school of philosophy—the Swedish counterpart of the Anglo-American Analytical Philosophy as well as of the Logical Positivism of the Vienna Circle—and as the founder of the Scandinavian legal realism movement. Some of his work was published by the Muirhead Library of Philosophy. He was Inspektor of the Östgöta nation from 1925 to his retirement in 1933. Contribution to legal understanding The jurisprudential camp of legal realism, broadly speaking, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Chipman Gray
John Chipman Gray (July 14, 1839February 25, 1915) was an American scholar of property law and professor at Harvard Law School. He also founded the law firm Ropes & Gray, with law partner John Codman Ropes. He was half-brother to U.S. Supreme Court associate justice Horace Gray, and a grandson of merchant and politician William Gray. Early life Gray was born in Brighton, Massachusetts to Horace and Sarah Russell (Gardner) Gray, and graduated from Boston Latin School. From there, he went on to Harvard University, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1859, and Harvard Law School, where he earned his law degree in 1861. Gray's politics, prior to the Civil War tended toward the Whig Party. However, he transited into the Know-Nothing Party when the Whigs collapsed. Although he became a Republican, he opined, while serving as a judge advocate, that President Abraham Lincoln did not possess the constitutional authority to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. However, when ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (March 8, 1841 – March 6, 1935) was an American jurist and legal scholar who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932.Holmes was Acting Chief Justice of the United States in February 1930. He is one of the most widely cited U.S. Supreme Court justices and most influential American common law judges in history, noted for his long service, pithy opinions—particularly those on civil liberties and American constitutional democracy—and deference to the decisions of elected legislatures. Holmes retired from the court at the age of 90, an unbeaten record for oldest justice on the Supreme Court. John Paul Stevens was only 8 months younger when he retired on April 12, 2010. He previously served as a Brevet Colonel in the American Civil War, in which he was wounded three times, as an associate justice and chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and as Weld Professor of Law at his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sociology Of Law
The sociology of law (legal sociology, or law and society) is often described as a sub-discipline of sociology or an interdisciplinary approach within legal studies. Some see sociology of law as belonging "necessarily" to the field of sociology, but others tend to consider it a field of research caught up between the disciplines of law and sociology. Still others regard it as neither a subdiscipline of sociology nor a branch of legal studies but as a field of research on its own right within the broader social science tradition. Accordingly, it may be described without reference to mainstream sociology as "the systematic, theoretically grounded, empirical study of law as a set of social practices or as an aspect or field of social experience". It has been seen as treating law and justice as fundamental institutions of the basic structure of society mediating "between political and economic interests, between culture and the normative order of society, establishing and maintainin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
