POLI 347 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Edward Coke, State Of Nature, Legal Positivism
Document Summary
Topic 5 (sept 30 & oct 2) sovereignty, authority, and law. Preliminary: the five different meanings of legal positivism"s; h. l. a, hart"s footnote at p52 of law and morality. Dialogue between a philosopher and a student of the common laws of. His goal: geometric method: necessary structure of law and government; eliminate disorder. Hobbes: man is a creature of desire as opposed to plato"s notion of man the different souls: -moral law: law that goes against the law of god is wrong law. However, there is no necessary connection between law and morals (while a sovereign may reference the bible etc, this doesn"t mean there is a connection) They don"t focus on law in society and its different from law in the books. This usually means that judges have no leeway, they just apply the rules there are no gaps in the law.