LAW214 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Legal Positivism, Social Fact, Ronald Dworkin
15 Mar 2020
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Week 2 law and force; austin vs hart. Natural law ideas, that is, maintaining that law is necessarily linked to justice. Wished to demystify law by providing an accurate description of law with all its imperfections, which they thought would provide the best basis for criticising and improving the law. Blackstone blurred the lines between dispassionate analysis and moral evaluation, Bentham made a clear distinction between what he called expository jurisprudence" and censorial jurisprudence". Expository jurisprudence; concerned with analysing the law that actually exists without regard to its justice or injustice. Censorial jurisprudence; critical and moral enterprise designed to improve or reform the law. Austin made a similar distinction between general jurisprudence" and the art of legislation". All laws properly so called are commands, a command being an order backed up by a. Sanction" in the vent of non-compliance with the command. Some commands are general (conduct or directed to classes of persons), and others are directed to individual people.
