WILLIAM JETHRO BROWN'S CRITIQUE OF JOHN AUSTIN'S LEGAL THEORY AS A STAGE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF LEGAL POSITIVISM

Abstract

The purpose of the research. This article analyses the main points of the legal teaching of the Australian jurist William Jethro Brown (1868-1930), which the authors of this study regard as forming one of the significant stages in the evolution of Anglo-American legal positivism. Along with his contemporaries, a New Zealand lawyer John William Salmond (1862-1924) and British jurists Thomas Erskine Holland (1835-1926) and John Mason Lightwood (1852-1947), Brown was among the first critics of the «command theory of law» of the founder of the analytical school of jurisprudence John Austin (1790-1859). The authors of this article prove that the ideas, including those of W. Brown, play the role of a link between the founders of the analytical school of law (J. Bentham, J. Austin), the teachings of William Markby, Sheldon Amos, and subsequent generations of English legal scholars of both positivist and neo-positivist direction. Many provisions of Brown's legal doctrine became the basis for criticism of Austin's command concept and legal understanding in the teachings of H. L. A. Hart, the central figure of English neopositivism of the 20th century. As a result of the research the authors conclude that there are comparative similarities between W. J. Brown's conception of «rules of external action», J. W. Salmond's idea of «ultimate legal principles» and H. L. A. Hart's legal doctrine on the «rule of recognition».