“Every positive law, or every law simply and strictly so called, is set, directly or circuitously, by a sovereign person or body, to a member or members of the independent political society wherein that person or body is supreme.”

— John Austin (legal philosopher)

Source: The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832), p. 136-137

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Every positive law, or every law simply and strictly so called, is set, directly or circuitously, by a sovereign person…" by John Austin (legal philosopher)?

John Austin (legal philosopher) 6

legal philosopher 1790–1859

Related quotes

“The matter of jurisprudence is positive law: law, simply and strictly so called : or law set by political superiors to political inferiors.”

John Austin (legal philosopher) (1790–1859) legal philosopher

Source: The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832), p. 1; opening line

“We be informed by our judges that we at no time stand so highly in our estate royal as in the time of Parliament, wherein we as head and you as members are conjoined and knit together into one body politic, so as whatsoever offence or injury (during that time) is offered to the meanest member of the House is to be judged as done against our person and the whole Court of Parliament.”

Henry VIII of England (1491–1547) King of England from 1509 until 1547

Speech to Parliament on parliamentary privilege (March/April 1542), as quoted in Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland Volume III (1808), by Raphael Holinshed, p. 824

“The community is a fictitious body, composed of the individual persons who are considered as constituting as it were its members. The interest of the community then is what? The sum of the interests of the several members who compose it.”

Jeremy Bentham book An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

Source: An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789; 1823), Ch. 1: Of the Principle of Utility

“… just as the limb gives assistance to the body, likewise the member of the community helps the community and reigns supreme.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Sri Ramana Gita

“For naturall Bloud is in like manner made of the fruits of the Earth; and circulating, nourisheth by the way, every Member of the Body of Man.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The Second Part, Chapter 24, p. 130 (See also: Velocity of money)
Leviathan (1651)

“The American Communist Party is not an autonomous body. Its members, who claim their rights under the American Constitution have already relinquished every personal right to an international, actually Russian, body. Their claim to participate in the political life of America is as preposterous as would be the claim of the Jugoslav Communist Party to participate, because the American, Russian, Jugoslav, Bulgarian, etc., parties are all the same organization.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Source: "Let the Record Speak" 1939, “The Truth about Communism” https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015051180423&view=1up&seq=5 (1948), p. 2

“What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.”

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) English crime writer, playwright, essayist and Christian writer

Essays, Are Women Human? (1938)

“A people whom Providence hath cast together into one island or country are in effect one great body politic, consisting of head and members, in imitation of the body natural, as is excellently set forth in the statute of appeals, made 24 H. 8, c. 12, which stiles the King the supreme head, and the people a body politic (these are the very words), compact of all sorts and degrees of men, divided into spirituality and temporality. And this body never dies.”

Robert Atkyns (judge) (1621–1710) Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer and Speaker of the House of Lords

11 How. St. Tr. 1204.
Trial of Sir Edward Hales (1686)

“I am a great admirer of Professor Hayek. Some of his books are absolutely supreme—“The Constitution of Liberty” and the three volumes on “Law, Legislation and Liberty”—and would be well read by almost every hon. Member.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech in the House of Commons (10 March 1981) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104593
First term as Prime Minister

“Human love is not love. Love is natural to every body but it becomes human love as the person learns from society to confuse love with sex.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

The Way In (2000)

“Every positive law, or every law simply and strictly so called, is set, directly or circuitously, by a sovereign person or body, to a member or members of the independent political society wherein that person or body is supreme.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

John Austin (legal philosopher) 6

Related quotes

Related topics