Abstract
‘Legal positivism’ examines classical legal positivism as espoused by its two great protagonists, Jeremy Bentham and John Austin, as well as the approaches of modern legal positivists, including H. L. A. Hart and Joseph Raz, to the concept of law. The claim of natural lawyers that law consists of a series of propositions derived from nature through a process of reasoning is strongly contested by legal positivists. The core of legal positivism is the view that the validity of any law can be traced to an objectively verifiable source. Legal positivism rejects the view — held by natural lawyers — that law exists independently from human enactment.
