Philosophy of law

Philosophy of law examines what law is, why it has authority, how legal rules should be interpreted, and how law relates to morality and justice.

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Legal positivism: The view that a law’s existence and content depend on social facts, not necessarily on its moral merits. It separates questions about what law is from questions about whether law is just.
Rule of recognition: H. L. A. Hart’s social rule identifying the criteria officials use to recognize valid law. It explains how a legal system can distinguish valid laws from other standards.
Command theory of law: John Austin’s account of law as commands issued by a sovereign and backed by sanctions. It offers a coercion-centered account that later theories challenge.
H. L. A. Hart: A British legal philosopher whose work developed modern legal positivism and the idea of a rule of recognition. His account recast law as a union of primary and secondary rules.
Legal rights: Claims, liberties, powers, or immunities that a legal system recognizes or grants. Rights theories ask whether legal entitlements reflect moral rights or create them.
Natural law: The view that law is connected to moral principles that reason can identify. It challenges accounts that make legal validity independent of morality.
Legal validity: The status a norm has when it satisfies a legal system’s criteria for being law. The concept clarifies what officials mean when they identify a rule as law.
Inclusive legal positivism: A form of legal positivism allowing a legal system’s criteria to incorporate moral standards. It qualifies the strict separation between law’s validity and morality.
Lon L. Fuller: An American legal philosopher who argued that law has an internal morality expressed in requirements of legality. His debate with Hart made law’s moral character a central question.
Civil disobedience: A conscientious, public breach of law intended to challenge a law or government policy. It puts legal obligation and the moral limits of obedience to a direct test.