ABSTRACT
The aim of John Austin (1790-1859) was to show ‘not what is law here or there, but what is law’ (Austin, 1863, p 32, Austin’s emphasis), and he believed that he had found the key to answering this question in the command theory of law. Though he was not the first theorist to put forward the command theory – Jeremy Bentham and, before him, Thomas Hobbes and Jean Bodin had spoken of law in similar terms – Austin is generally acknowledged as having provided its
You should be familiar with the following areas:
Austin’s theory of law as commands laid down by the sovereign and backed up by sanctions
Hart’s theory of law in terms of rules and, in particular, of law as a combination of primary and secondary rules
Kelsen’s theory of law as an order of norms the validity of which rests on a presupposed ‘grundnorm’
fullest exposition. Austin also followed Bentham in aiming to extend the methods of science to the study of social phenomena. He was, in particular, a great admirer of James Mill’s science of political economy and he expressly set out to put the study of law on the same scientific footing.
