Legal Positivism
- Theory
- Legal Positivism
- Jurist
- Jeremy Bentham
- Description
Holds that law is a matter of social fact — its validity comes from its sources (sovereign command, enactment, recognized authority), not from its moral merit. Its core separability thesis insists that what law is and what law ought to be are distinct questions, directly rejecting natural law's claim that an unjust law is no law.