John Austin (legal philosopher)
John Austin | |
|---|---|
| Born | 3 March 1790 Creeting Mill, Suffolk, England |
| Died | 1 December 1859 (aged 69) Weybridge, Surrey, England |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 19th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Legal positivism |
| Institutions | UCL Faculty of Laws |
| Main interests | Legal philosophy |
| Notable ideas | Criticism of natural law |
John Austin (3 March 1790 – 1 December 1859) was an English legal theorist who posthumously influenced British and American law with an analytical approach to jurisprudence and a theory of legal positivism. Austin opposed traditional approaches of "natural law", arguing against any need for connections between law and morality. Human legal systems, he claimed, can and should be studied in an empirical, value-free way.