Sociology 3260A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Legal Positivism, Moral Authority, Legal Realism
Document Summary
Today"s agenda: announcements, review, legalistic approaches to law, introducing law & society. Legalistic approaches to law: naturalism or natural law theory, roughly emerged in the 16th century, morality is given to us by god, there is no human intervention around the finding of moral reality but it is what. It is based on the structure of reality itself. It is the same for all human beings at all times. It is an unchanging rule or pattern which is there for human beings to discover. It is naturally moral and represents moral order. It is a means by which human beings can rationally carry themselves to good: external to society, legal positivism or legal formalism, legal realism/sociological jurisprudence. Legal positivism sees questions of morality as separate and distinct from law: concerned with human law, positivist law, rules, procedures, emerged from opposition to natural law, prevailed since 19th century and continues to dominate in law school.