Philosophy of law

Philosophy of law is a branch of philosophy and jurisprudence that seeks to answer basic questions about law and legal systems, such as "What is law?", "What are the criteria for legal validity?", "What is the relationship between law and morality?", and many other similar questions.

Positive laws (Latin: ius positum) are human-made laws that oblige or specify an action.

Positivism is a philosophical theory stating that positive knowledge is based on natural phenomena and their properties and relations.

The rule of law is the legal principle that law should govern a nation, as opposed to being governed by arbitrary decisions of individual government officials.

Jurisprudence is the science, study, and theory of law.

Legal positivism is a school of thought of analytical jurisprudence, largely developed by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century legal thinkers such as Jeremy Bentham and John Austin.

Contemporary political sociology involves, but is not limited to, the study of the relations between state, society, and citizens.

Torture (from the Latin tortus, "twisted") is the act of deliberately inflicting physical or psychological pain on an organism in order to fulfill some desire of the torturer or compel some action from the victim.

The word authority (derived from the Latin word auctoritas) can be used to mean the right to exercise power given by the State (in the form of government, judges, police officers, etc.), or by academic knowledge of an area (someone that can be an authority on a subject).

The Golden Rule or law of reciprocity is the principle of treating others as one would wish to be treated oneself.

Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil—commonly referred to as Leviathan—is a book written by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and published in 1651 (revised Latin edition 1668).

An organic law is a law, or system of laws, that form the foundation of a government, corporation or any other organization's body of rules.

Moral, ethical, legal, and political discussions use the concept of dignity to express the idea that a being has an innate right to be valued, respected, and to receive ethical treatment.

Elements of the Philosophy of Right (EPR; German: Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, GPR) is a work by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel published in 1820, though the book's original title page dates it to 1821.

Constitutionalism is "a complex of ideas, attitudes, and patterns of behavior elaborating the principle that the authority of government derives from and is limited by a body of fundamental law".

The German Historical School of Jurisprudence is a 19th-century intellectual movement in the study of German law.

Public interest, according to the Random House Dictionary, is "1.

Rechtsstaat is a doctrine in continental European legal thinking, originating in German jurisprudence, that can be translated as "legal state", "state of law", "state of justice", "state of rights", or "state based on justice and integrity".

Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy: A Polemic Against the System is an essay by Duncan Kennedy on legal education in the United States of America.

Treatise on Law is St.

The philosophy of human rights attempts to examine the underlying basis of the concept of human rights and critically looks at its content and justification.

Natural Law and Natural Rights is a 1980 book by philosopher John Finnis.

The Radbruch Formula (German: Radbruchsche Formel) is a theory of law which was first formulated in a 1946 essay by the German law professor and politician Gustav Radbruch.

Divine law is any law that comes directly from the "will of God" in contrast to man-made law.

Seana Valentine Shiffrin is Professor of Philosophy and Pete Kameron Professor of Law and Social Justice at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The Feminism and Legal Theory Project is a project aimed at addressing issues relating to women and law.

The letter of the law versus the spirit of the law is an idiomatic antithesis.

Judicial activism refers to judicial rulings suspected of being based on personal or political considerations rather than on existing law.

A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression is a non-fiction book by Judge Richard Posner.

Retfærd (Danish: "Justice"), subtitled Nordic Journal of Law and Justice, is a Nordic peer-reviewed academic journal of legal science, publishing research from a "theoretical and practical point of view on the basis of not only jurisprudence, but also sociology, criminology, political science, history, philosophy, economics, ecology, anthropology, feminism and other sciences.

The term Unrechtsstaat is a pejorative used to refer to a state that is not a Rechtsstaat, or a constitutional state in which the exercise of governmental power is not constrained by the law.

German Ethics Council (German: Deutscher Ethikrat) (Precursor from June 2001 to February 2008: National Ethics Council) is an independent council of experts in Germany working on the ethical, social, scientific, medical, and legal issues and their consequences for the individuals and the society.

Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie (English: Archives for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy) is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal of philosophy.

Law's Empire is a 1986 text in legal philosophy by the late Oxford scholar Ronald Dworkin which continues his criticism of the philosophy of legal positivism as promoted by H.

Normative means relating to an ideal standard or model, or being based on what is considered to be the normal or correct way of doing something.

Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld (8 August 1879, Oakland, California – 21 October 1918, Alameda, California) was an American jurist.

In private international law, the public policy doctrine or ordre public concerns the body of principles that underpin the operation of legal systems in each state.

Competition law theory covers the strands of thought relating to competition law or antitrust policy.