Philosophy of Law
1) Legal Philosophy:
Legal philosophy is a subfield of philosophy that studies the essence of law and how it interacts with other ethical and political systems of thought. It poses queries like “What is law?” “What are the standards for legal validity?” and “How do law and morality interact?” Although the terms jurisprudence and philosophy of law are frequently used interchangeably, jurisprudence occasionally includes theories of reasoning that belong in economics or sociology.
Legal philosophy, also known as the philosophy of law, is further separated into analytical and normative jurisprudence. Analytical jurisprudence identifies the fundamental components of law in an effort to describe what it is and what it is not. Investigated by normative jurisprudence are both the non-legal standards that influence law and the legal norms that emerge from the law and direct behaviour.
2) Legal Positivism:
According to legal positivism, social facts are what law is most heavily dependent on. The pedigree thesis, the separability thesis, and the discretion thesis are the three concepts that legal positivism has historically been linked to. According to the pedigree thesis, the best approach to determine if a command is legal is to consider its genesis. The thesis contends that the legality of a directive, as opposed to its moral or practical virtues, is determined by the fact that it was issued by the appropriate authority within a legitimate government, for instance.
According to the separability thesis, morality and legality are conceptually separate. However, the separability thesis asserts that “it is in no sense a necessary truth that laws reproduce or satisfy certain demands of morality, but in fact they have often done so,” notwithstanding the possibility that laws contain morality. The scope of the separability thesis is a point of contention among legal positivists. Exclusive legal positivists, such as Joseph Raz, go beyond the conventional premise and dispute that morality can ever be a component of law. According to the discretion thesis, judges who are given discretion to decide circumstances when existing law underdetermines the outcome really create new law.
3) Formalism in Law:
A philosophy according to which the law is distinct from other social and political organisations. This idea holds that once legislators create rules, courts apply them to the facts of a case without taking into account social concerns or public policy. Legal formalism and legal realism are dissimilar in this regard. Either theory can be seen from a descriptive, prescriptive, or combined perspective.
4) Natural Law:
Natural law is a body of rules that may be inferred and applied without the aid of positive law and is based on a close examination of human nature (the express enacted laws of a state or society). The natural law idea holds that all people have inherent rights that are given to them by “God, nature, or reason” rather than through a law. The term “theories of ethics, theories of politics, theories of civil law, and ideas of religious morality” can also be used to describe theories of natural law.
5) Constitutionalism:
Constitutionalism is the belief that a country’s legal system or constitution determines the power of its government. Although limited government is commonly associated with constitutionalism, that association is merely one meaning of the term and is in no way the most prevalent one historically. Constitutionalism is a collection of beliefs, dispositions, and modes of conduct that elaborate the notion that the power of the state derives from and is constrained by a body of basic law.
6) Legal Realism:
According to legal realism, choices made by courts, law enforcement, and attorneys—decisions that are frequently made on conflicting or arbitrary grounds—create laws. Legal realism contends that the rule of law is not a logical set of guidelines and standards. The assumption that law has a nature that can be examined in the abstract is contested by legal realism.
Legal realists, on the other hand, support an empirical approach to jurisprudence that is grounded on social sciences and the actual application of law in society. For this reason, the sociology of law is frequently linked with legal realism. With Oliver Wendell Holmes and John Chipman Grey, legal realism rose to popularity in the United States in the late 19th century. With the help of Axel Hägerström, legal realism gained traction in Scandinavia during the 20th century.
7) Famous Philosophers of Law:
Law philosophers are interested in a wide range of philosophical issues that come up in specific legal fields like tort, contract, criminal, and constitutional law. Thus, theories of contract law, conceptions of criminal punishment, theories of tort liability, and the question of whether judicial review is appropriate are all covered by philosophy of law. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Hadley Arkes, Francis Bacon, John Locke, Francisco Suarez, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Hans Kelsen are a few of the most illustrious legal thinkers.
