LEGAL POSITIVISM

Legal Positivism

Legal Positivism

Introduction

Legal positivism is a school of thought of philosophy of law and jurisprudence, largely developed by nineteenth-century legal thinkers such as Jeremy Bentham and John Austin. However, the most prominent figure in the history of legal positivism is H.L.A. Hart, whose work The Concept of Law caused a fundamental re-thinking of the positivist doctrine and its relationship with the other principal theories of law. In more recent years the central claims of legal positivism have come under significant attack from Ronald Dworkin. Legal positivists make some distinctive claims about what constitutes legal validity. It is difficult to improve on the following introduction offered by Leslie Green: "Whether a society has a legal system depends on the presence of certain structures of governance, not on the extent to which it satisfies ideals of justice, democracy, or the rule of law.

We generally refer to positivism as a philosophical system based on experience and empirical knowledge of natural phenomena in order to delve in this perspective to what is known as legal positivism. We then have that positivism is a general spiritual power which involves only stick to the facts, defend the real and its laws, is a triumph of natural science in epistemology and physics basis of the scientific center.

That said we have that legal positivism is to apply the epistemological model of physics - mathematics used by positivism to legal field.

Positivism denies completely the naturalistic conception of law that this reality is the idea and this is not verifiable and experimentation, lacking real entity and therefore not subject to scientific knowledge.

With legal positivism he wants to give the unique nature of science to law stripping of certain traditional practices that do not benefit the scientific method, separating the right to be his duty to be to the extent that the latter because an idea is not testable nor verifiable, understanding the law as a tangible reality that governs the social life of peoples and seeing it from this perspective you apply the principles of positivism cognitive science-based physical - mathematical.

A very early history of legal positivism is found at the beginning of the Republic of Plato when dialogist Thrasymachus says: "And so, each government sets the laws at your convenience: democracy, democratic laws, tyranny, tyrannical, and likewise other. Setting them, show that the powers that be fair to the governed as far as they should, and who is out of this is punished as a violator of the law and justice. Such, my good friend, which I say that in every city is identically right: the convenience to the constituted government. And this is, I believe, which has the power, so that, for every man that runs well, fair is the same everywhere: the convenience of the fittest. “We might well consider the rest of the book in response to this argument.

Types of Legal Positivism

Current imperativism that the law is valid is the mandate of the sovereign backed by the fact of a habitual ...