Legal positivism is a modern intellectual tradition in the philosophy of law and jurisprudence that holds that law is a set of rules created by human beings who prescribe certain procedures for its enactment. This contrasts with natural law theory, which has ancient roots and holds that inherent moral principles provide a basis for the law, and that an immoral law is not a true law. Legal positivists oppose this view, maintaining that the validity of a law is determined by social facts such as enactment by a recognized authority following accepted procedures, rather than from any moral criterion.
Legal positivism was developed largely during the 18th and 19th centuries by legal philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham and John Austin. Thomas Hobbes first explained law as anything commanded by the sovereign. Early positivists Bentham and John Austin developed this idea, with the validity of the law deriving from society's recognition of the sovereign's authority to declare law and enforce it. In the Germanic tradition, Hans Kelsen went a step further, divorcing law not only from morals, as the early positivists did, but also from facts, introducing instead the idea of a "norm" as something that "ought to be" in contrast to a fact, that merely "is", and imputing "law" to a legal norm based on the authority of another norm, where the ultimate authority resides not in the sovereign, but in a "basic norm". The most prominent legal positivists of the 20th century included Kelsen, H. L. A. Hart, and Joseph Raz.
The term positivism in legal positivism is connected to the sense of the verb to posit rather than the sense of positive (as opposed to negative). In this sense, the term positivism is derived from Latin Latin: positus, the past participle of Latin: ponere, meaning "to place" or "to put". Legal positivism holds that laws are rules established (that is, "posited") by human beings, and that this act of positing the law makes it authoritative and binding.[1]
In the positivist opinion, the source of a law is the establishment of that law by some legal authority that is recognised socially. The merits of a law are a separate issue: it may be a bad law by some standard, but if it was added to the system by a legitimate authority following accepted procedures, it is still a law.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy summarises the distinction between merit and source: "The fact that a policy would be just, wise, efficient, or prudent is never sufficient reason for thinking that it is actually the law, and the fact that it is unjust, unwise, inefficient or imprudent is never sufficient reason for doubting it. According to positivism, law is a matter of what has been posited (ordered, decided, practiced, tolerated, etc.); as we might say in a more modern idiom, positivism is the view that law is a social construction."[1]
Legal positivism does not claim that the laws so identified should be obeyed, or that necessarily there is value in having clear, identifiable rules (although some positivists may also make these claims). Indeed, the laws of a legal system may be quite unjust, and the state may be quite illegitimate; as a result, there may be no obligation to obey them. Moreover, the fact that a law has been identified by a court as valid does not provide any guidance as to whether the court should apply it in a particular case. As John Gardner has said, legal positivism is "normatively inert";[2] it is a theory of law, not a theory of legal practice, adjudication, or political obligation. Legal positivists believe that intellectual clarity is best achieved by leaving these questions for separate investigation.
The main antecedent of legal positivism is empiricism, the thinkers of which range back as far as Sextus Empiricus, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, and Auguste Comte. The main idea of empiricism is the claim that all knowledge of fact must be validated by sense experience or be inferred from propositions derived unambiguously from sense data. Further, empiricism is in opposition to metaphysics; for instance, Hume rejected metaphysics as mere speculation beyond what can be learnt from sense experience.[3] The teachings of the empiricists preceded systemization of a positivist method for problems of comprehension and analysis, which was later represented by legal positivism.[4]
Traditionally, positivist theories of law have been developed by theorists applying the method of conceptual analysis to determine what is 'natural to say'.[5] This approach assumes that legal concepts, being 'settled by the classificatory machinery of human thought', are 'amenable only to philosophical … reflection'.[6] Recently, researchers in the emerging field of experimental jurisprudence have challenged this assumption by exploring the relation between law and morality through systematic, psychological investigations of folk legal concepts.[7]
Legal positivism is related to empiricist and logical positivist theoretical traditions. Its methods include descriptive investigations of particular legal orders. Peter Curzon wrote that this approach "utilizes in its investigations the inductive method" which proceeds "from observation of particular facts to generalizations concerning all such facts." These investigations eschew assessments of ethics, social welfare, and morality. As Julius Stone wrote, legal positivist investigation is concerned primarily with "an analysis of legal terms, and an inquiry into the logical interrelations of legal propositions".[8] Further, law and its authority are framed as source-based: the validity of a legal norm depends not on its moral value, but on the sources determined by a social community's rules and conventions. This source-based conception aligns with the logical positivism of Rudolf Carnap, who rejected metaphysical conjecture about the nature of reality beyond observable events.
Thomas Hobbes, in his seminal work Leviathan, offered the first detailed theory of law as based on sovereign power. As Jean Elizabeth Hampton writes, "law is understood [by Hobbes] to depend on the sovereign's will. No matter what a law's content, no matter how unjust it seems, if it has been commanded by the sovereign, then and only then is it law." There is, however, debate surrounding Hobbes's status as a legal positivist.[9] [10] [11]
The English jurist and philosopher Jeremy Bentham was arguably the greatest British legal positivist. In An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Bentham developed a theory of law as the expressed will of a sovereign. In 'A Fragment on Government', Bentham distinguished between the following types of people:
The philosophy of law, considered strictly, was to explain the real laws of the expositors, rather than the criticisms of the censors.
Bentham is also noted for terming natural rights "nonsense upon stilts".[13] [14]
John Austin partly emulated Bentham by writing The Province of Jurisprudence Determined.[15] However, Austin differed from Bentham in a number of ways, as, for example, by endorsing the common law.
Differences aside, Austin embraced Hobbes's and Bentham's conception of law as a sovereign command, whose authority is recognised by most members of a society; the authority of which is enforced by the use of sanctions, but which is not bound by any human superior. The criterion for validity of a legal rule in such a society is that it has the warrant of the sovereign and will be enforced by the sovereign power and its agents.
The three main tenets of Austin's command theory are:
Austin considered law to be commands from a sovereign that are enforced by a threat of sanction. In determining 'a sovereign', Austin recognised it is one whom society obeys habitually. This sovereign can be a single person or a collective sovereign such as Parliament, with a number of individuals, with each having various authoritative powers. Austin's theory is also somewhat brief in his explanations of Constitutions, International Law, non-sanctioned rules, or law that gives rights. Insofar as non-sanctioned rules and laws that allow persons to do things, such as contract law, Austin said that failure to obey the rules does result in sanctions; however, such sanctions are in the form of "the sanction of nullity".
See main article: Hans Kelsen and Pure Theory of Law.
The British legal positivism hitherto mentioned was founded on empiricism; by contrast, legal positivism was founded on the transcendental idealism of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Whereas British legal positivists regard law as distinct from morals, their Germanic counterparts regard law as separate from both fact and morals. The most famous proponent of Germanic legal positivism is Hans Kelsen, whose thesis of legal positivism is explained by Suri Ratnapala, who writes:
From this framework, Kelsen opined that the regression of validated norms cannot go on infinitely and must arrive at a first cause, which he called a (German: Grundnorm). The legal system is therefore a system of legal norms connected to one another by their common origin, like the branches and leaves of a tree.
For Kelsen, "sovereignty" was an arbitrary concept: "We can derive, however, from this concept of sovereignty only what we have purposely put into its definition".[16] Kelsen attracted disciples among scholars of public law worldwide. These disciples developed schools of thought to extend his theories, such as the Vienna School in Austria and the Brno School in Czechoslovakia. In English-speaking countries, H. L. A. Hart and Joseph Raz are perhaps the best-known authors who were influenced by Kelsen, though their legal philosophies differed from Kelsen's theories in several respects.
Hart approved of Austin's theory of a sovereign but claimed that Austin's command theory failed in several important respects. Among the ideas Hart developed in The Concept of Law (1961) are:
In 1958, Hart analyzed descriptions or definitions as given by different proponents of legal positivism as including one or more of these five contentions in different combinations:
Historically, legal positivism is in opposition to natural law's theories of jurisprudence, with particular disagreement surrounding the natural law claim that there is a necessary connection between law and morality.
See main article: Joseph Raz.
A pupil of Hart's, Joseph Raz was important in continuing Hart's arguments of legal positivism after Hart's death. This included editing in 1994 a second edition of Hart's The Concept of Law, with an additional section including Hart's responses to other philosophers' criticisms of his work.[18]
Raz also argued, contrary to Hart,[18] that the validity of a law can never depend on its morality.[19]
Sometimes the term 'positivist' is used in a pejorative sense to condemn a doctrine according to which the law is always clear (legal formalism) and, however unjust, must be strictly enforced by officials and obeyed by subjects (so-called 'ideological positivism').[1] [20] [21] When identified with legal formalism, legal positivism is opposed to legal realism. Legal positivism, understood as formalism, believes that in most cases the law provides definite guidance to its subjects and to judges; legal realists, on the other hand, often embrace rule scepticism, claiming that legal rules are indeterminate and do not constrain judicial discretion.[22] However, both legal positivism and legal realism believe that law is a human construct. Moreover, most realists adopted some version of the positivist doctrine of the separation of law and morality.[23]
According to Brian Leiter, the view that positivism and realism are incompatible positions is probably largely due to Hart's critique of legal realism,[24] but American legal realists were "tacit legal positivists" who acknowledged that all law stems from authoritative sources such as statutes and precedents.[25] Most legal realists denied the existence of natural law, had a scientific approach to the law based on the distinction between describing and evaluating the law, and denied the existence of an objective (moral or political) obligation to obey the law; they therefore qualified as legal positivists.
In 1961 Norberto Bobbio argued that the phrase "legal positivism" is used with three different meanings, referring to different and largely independent doctrines, which he called "positivism as a way of approaching the study of law" (methodological legal positivism), "positivism as a theory or conception of law" (theoretical legal positivism) and "positivism as an ideology of justice" (Ideological legal positivism).[26] [27]
Methodological legal positivism is a value-free, scientific approach to the study of law and, at the same time, is a way of conceiving the object of legal knowledge. It is characterised by a sharp distinction between real law and ideal law (or "law as fact" and "law as value", "law as it is" and "law as it should be") and by the conviction that legal science should be concerned with the former. Theoretical legal positivism is a cluster of theories about the nature of law related to a "statalist" conception of law. They include the theory that the law is a set of commands issued by the sovereign authority, whose binding force is guaranteed by the threat of sanctions (coercitive imperativism); a theory of legal sources, in which statute law enjoys supremacy (legalism); a theory of the legal order, which is supposed to be a complete and coherent system of norms, free of gaps (lacunae) and contradictions (antinomies); and a theory legal interpretation, conceived of as a pure act of cognition: a mechanical and logical activity. Finally, ideological legal positivism is defined by Bobbio as the normative theory according to which positive law ought to be obeyed (ethical legalism).[28]
See main article: Radbruch formula.
Legal positivism in Germany was famously rejected by Gustav Radbruch in 1946 where prosecution of Nazi supporters faced a challenge of assessing actions that had complied with Nazi law. In what has come to be known as the Radbruch formula, he argued that in general an unjust law must be recognised as law, "unless the conflict between statute and justice reaches such an intolerable degree that the statute, as 'flawed law', must yield to justice" or, more precisely: "Where there is not even an attempt at justice, where equality, the core of justice, is deliberately betrayed in the issuance of positive law, then the statute is not merely 'flawed law', it lacks completely the very nature of law."[29]