The Province of Jurisprudence Determined

by John Austin

Overview

Austin introduced theories of analytical jurisprudence and positive law in this landmark book, which also became the founding text of legal positivism. This reissue of the only edition published during his lifetime, long unavailable, will be of great interest to researchers, historians, libraries and scholars of jurisprudence. John Austin [1790-1859] is best known for developing the theory of legal positivism. After serving in the military he read law and was called to the bar in 1818. He abandoned his practice when he was appointed to the first chair of Jurisprudence at the University of London in 1826, a post he held until 1835. His work was greatly influenced by Jeremy Bentham, a close friend. Austin was the dominant English legal theorist for over a century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781584770237
Publisher:	The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.
Publication date:	10/12/2012
Edition description:	FACSIMILE
Pages:	492
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.25(d)

About the Author

JOHN AUSTIN was born March 3, 1790, at Creeting Mill, Suf­folk, England. After five years in the army, Austin began to study law, and from 1818 to 1825 he practiced at the chancery bar. In 1820, he married Sarah Taylor (1793-1867), who trans­lated and edited German and French historical texts, including Leopold von Ranke's History of the Popes (1840) and History of the Reformation in Germany (1845) and Francois Guizot's English Revolution (1850). Both Austin and his wife were ardent Utili­tarians; intimate friends of social theorists Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and his son John Stuart Mill; and much concerned with legal reform. 

When University College, London, was founded in 1826, Austin was appointed its first professor of jurisprudence. He spent the next two years in Germany studying Roman law and the work of German experts on modern civil law. Austin's first lectures, in 1828, were attended by many distinguished men, but he failed to attract students and eventually he resigned his chair in 1832. In 1834, after delivering a shorter but equally unsuc­cessful version of his lectures, he abandoned the teaching of jurisprudence. He was appointed to the Criminal Law Com­mission in 1833 but, finding little support for his opinions, resigned in frustration after signing its first two reports. In 1836 he was appointed a commissioner on the affairs of Malta. The Austins then lived abroad, chiefly in Paris, until 1848, when they settled in Surrey, where John Austin died at Weybridge in December 1859. 

Austin's best-known work, a version of part of his lectures, is The Province of Jurisprudence Determined, published in 1832. Defining the sphere of ethics and law, it came to revolutionize English views on the subject, and was welcomed by American jurists such as J.C. Gray and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Editorial Reviews

A new edition of Austin's prefatory first part of Lectures on Jurisprudence or the Philosophy of Positive Laws. The editors have improved the layout of the text with modern word processing, pruned some of Austin's excessive punctuation, included the relevant sections of Austin's Synopsis of Lectures at the beginning of each lecture, and broken up very long text by using parts of each synopsis as sub- headings. A biographical sketch of Austin is included. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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