LAWS 3908 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Jeremy Bentham, Nebulous, Sophocles
Document Summary
Week 1 (introduction) - advanced approaches to legal studies. Chapter 1 - classical natural law theory: law must comply with the doctrines of a higher, natural, moral authority conceived in various ways such as god or right reasoning. Chapter 2 - (modern) natural law theory: law is an ordering, rule-driven, and morally defensible process that determines good/bad human behaviour. Chapter 3 - positivist law theory: law is an amoral, autonomous, and closed rule-bound system commanded and enforced by a sovereign state. Chapter 4 - legal realist theory: law is a set of active decision-making processes that is always influenced by social, cultural, and political, and psychological factors and circumstances. Chapter 5 durkheim"s sociology of law: the diverse theories have a common understanding of law as being shaped by society, but also as a shaper of the society of which it operates.
