John Austin (legal philosopher) Quotes

John Austin was a noted English legal theorist, who influenced British and American law with his analytical approach to jurisprudence and his theory of legal positivism. In opposing traditional approaches of "natural law", Austin argued against any necessity for connections between law and morality. Human legal systems, he claimed, can and should be studied in an empirical, value-free way. Wikipedia  

✵ 3. March 1790 – 1. December 1859
John Austin (legal philosopher) photo
John Austin (legal philosopher): 6   quotes 0   likes

Famous John Austin (legal philosopher) Quotes

“The existence of a law is one thing, its merits or demerits is are another thing. Whether a law be, is one inquiry; whether it ought to be o whether it agree with a given or assumed test, is another and a distinct inquiry.”

Variant:
The existence of law is one thing; its merit or demerit is another. Whether it be or be not is one enquiry; whether it be or be not conformable to an assumed standard, is a different enquiry. A law, which actually exists, is a law, though we happen to dislike it, or though it vary from the text, by which we regulate our approbation and disapprobation.
John Austin, Austin Lectures on Jurisprudence; or The Philosophy of Positive Law, 1873, Lecture V
Source: The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832), p. 278

Similar authors

Henri-Frédéric Amiel photo
Henri-Frédéric Amiel 50
Swiss philosopher and poet
Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Arthur Schopenhauer 261
German philosopher
Ludwig Feuerbach photo
Ludwig Feuerbach 36
German philosopher and anthropologist
Auguste Comte photo
Auguste Comte 23
French philosopher
John Stuart Mill photo
John Stuart Mill 179
British philosopher and political economist
William James photo
William James 246
American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 106
German philosopher
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Sören Kierkegaard 309
Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism
Giacomo Leopardi photo
Giacomo Leopardi 18
Italian poet, philosopher and writer
Thomas Carlyle photo
Thomas Carlyle 481
Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian…