Law

Roman Stoic natural law

True law is right reason in agreement with nature, universal, unchanging, and everlasting; there is one eternal and immutable law valid for all nations and all times. No decree of a senate or people can release us from its obligations, and a statute that violates it does not deserve the name of law. This higher law, implanted in the rational human mind and shared with the gods, is the standard by which human enactments must be judged.

On the Republic; On the Laws (De Legibus).

Scholastic natural law

Law is an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by the one who has care of the community, and promulgated. Human (positive) law derives its force from the natural law, either by conclusion from its principles or by determination of what it leaves open; a human law that conflicts with the natural law is not law but 'a corruption of law' and does not bind in conscience. Eternal law in the divine mind grounds the natural law that rational creatures share by participation.

Summa Theologiae, I-II, qq. 90–97 ('Treatise on Law').

Chinese Legalism

Order comes not from the virtue of rulers but from clear, public, impartial laws (fa) applied uniformly through rewards and punishments. Laws must be written plainly so all can know them, enforced without regard to rank or affection, and backed by the ruler's concealed statecraft (shu) and positional power (shi). Trusting in human goodness is naive; well-designed law that aligns self-interest with order can make even a mediocre ruler govern effectively.

Han Feizi.

Enlightenment political theory

Laws are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things, and positive laws must be adapted to the physical and moral conditions — climate, geography, commerce, religion, and the spirit — of each people. Liberty is secured not by the goodness of rulers but by the structure of institutions, above all the separation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers so that power checks power. This comparative, sociological approach treats law as embedded in the whole life of a nation.

The Spirit of the Laws (1748).

Utilitarian positivism

Law is the will of a sovereign expressed in commands backed by sanctions; talk of natural rights antecedent to law is 'nonsense upon stilts'. What law is must be sharply separated from what it ought to be, and the standard for what it ought to be is the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Bentham demanded that law be codified, clear, and publicly justified by utility, sweeping away the mysteries and fictions of the common law.

An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789); Of Laws in General.

Analytical jurisprudence

Law properly so called is the command of a sovereign — a determinate superior habitually obeyed by the bulk of a society and obeying no one — backed by the threat of a sanction. The existence of law is one thing, its merit or demerit another; a law's injustice does not affect its status as law. This 'command theory' made jurisprudence a rigorous analytical science of the concepts of duty, right, and sovereignty.

The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832).

German Historical School

Law is not made by arbitrary legislation but grows organically out of the spirit of a people (Volksgeist), like its language and customs. It develops silently through usage and the work of jurists before being fixed in statute, so premature codification can sever law from its living historical roots. Savigny's historical method turned attention to the evolution of legal institutions, especially Roman law, as the record of a nation's inner development.

On the Vocation of Our Age for Legislation and Jurisprudence (1814); System of Modern Roman Law.

American legal realism (forerunner)

'The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.' Law is best understood from the standpoint of the 'bad man' who cares only about consequences: it is a prediction of what courts will in fact do. Holmes separated law from morality for analytical clarity and stressed that judges make policy choices shaped by the felt necessities of the time rather than deducing results from abstract principles.

The Common Law (1881); 'The Path of the Law' (1897).

Normativist positivism

The 'Pure Theory of Law' studies law as a hierarchy of norms, purified of morality, politics, and sociology. Each norm derives its validity from a higher norm, and the whole system rests on a presupposed 'basic norm' (Grundnorm) that grounds the constitution's authority. Law is a coercive normative order describable in strictly legal terms of 'ought', without reference to justice or fact, giving jurisprudence its own autonomous object.

Pure Theory of Law (1934; 2nd ed. 1960).

Procedural natural law

Law has an 'inner morality' — eight formal requirements such as generality, publicity, clarity, non-contradiction, stability, and congruence between rules and their enforcement. A system that grossly violates these principles fails not just as good law but as law at all, so legality itself carries moral weight. Against Hart, Fuller argued that a regime of secret, retroactive, or unintelligible commands cannot properly guide conduct and does not deserve the name of a legal system.

The Morality of Law (1964).

Analytical positivism

A legal system is the union of primary rules of obligation and secondary rules that create, change, and adjudicate them, chief among them a 'rule of recognition' by which officials identify valid law. Law is grounded in social practice and the 'internal point of view' of those who accept its rules, not in the gunman's threat writ large. Hart defended a 'soft' positivism separating law from morality while acknowledging a 'minimum content of natural law' rooted in basic human needs.

The Concept of Law (1961).

Interpretivism / law as integrity

Law is not merely a system of rules but includes principles of political morality, so even in hard cases there is a right answer that judges must find, not invent. Against Hart's rule of recognition, Dworkin argued that legal reasoning is interpretive: the judge, like a novelist writing a chapter, must construe past practice in the light that shows the community's law in its best moral light. This 'law as integrity' rejects the sharp separation of law and morality that unites the positivists.

Taking Rights Seriously (1977); Law's Empire (1986).