The prediction theory of law was a key component of the Oliver Wendell Holmes's jurisprudential philosophy. At its most basic, the theory is an attempted refutation of most previous definitions of the

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...

. Holmes believed that the law should be defined as a prediction, most specifically, a prediction of how the courts behave. His rationale was based on an argument regarding the opinion of a "bad man." Bad men, Holmes argued in his speech "The Path of the Law", care little for ethics or lofty conceptions of natural law; instead they care simply about staying out of jail and avoiding the payment of damages. In Holmes's mind, therefore, it was most useful to define "the law" as a prediction of what will bring punishment or other consequences from a court. The theory played a key role in influencing American

legal realism Legal realism is a naturalistic approach to law. It is the view that jurisprudence should emulate the methods of natural science, i.e., rely on empirical evidence. Hypotheses must be tested against observations of the world. Legal realists ...

H. L. A. Hart Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart (18 July 190719 December 1992), known simply as H. L. A. Hart, was an English legal philosopher. He was Professor of Jurisprudence (University of Oxford), Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford University an ...

criticized the theories in his ''

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 ...

'' (1961). He argued that (1) they were blind to the internal point of view towards law, the sense shared by officials and law-abiding citizens that rules of law 'ought' to be obeyed, and (2) they undervalue "the ways in which the law is used to control, to guide, and to plan life out of court." As for the 'bad man', Hart asks, "Why should not law be equally if not more concerned with the 'puzzled man' or 'ignorant man' who is willing to do what is required, if only he can be told what it is? Or with the 'man who wishes to arrange his affairs' if only he can be told how to do it?"Hart, p. 40

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