The Legal Philosophy and Influence of Jeremy Bentham

2014 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Jeremy Bentham

“A Hatchet for Paley’s Net”: Bentham on capital punishment and judicial discretion

1988 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E. Crimmins
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Judicial Discretion ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Unpublished Manuscripts ◽  
Discretionary Powers

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) was a life-long opponent of capital punishment. All told he left us three essays on the subject, dating from 1775,1809 and 1830, only the first and third of which have been published and subjected to critical analysis. In this article I am concerned with the unpublished manuscripts of 1809. Hitherto ignored by students of utilitarian legal philosophy, these papers contain what is perhaps Bentham’s most trenchant criticisms not only of capital punishment per se but also of the extensive discretionary powers which its administration made available to England’s magistrates. With legislators making increasing use of the penalty of death in the second half of the eighteenth century, magistrates felt compelled to grant reprieves to convicted capital offenders and to substitute lesser penalties as a matter of common practice. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, this manner of dispensing justice was an issue of some moment to law reformers of all persuasions, including the radical Bentham.

scholarly journals Herbert Hart’s Theory of Definition in the Context of Analytical Legal Philosophy

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-172
Author(s):  
Vitaly Vasil'evich Ogleznev
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Method ◽  
New Method ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Contextual Definition ◽  
Truth Conditional ◽  
Theory Of Definition ◽  
Legal Concepts ◽  
Range Of Values ◽  
Modern Analytical

The article presents Herbert Hart’s theory of definition in the context of modern analytical legal philosophy. Dissatisfaction with the applicability of the traditional method of definition by the genus and differentia to the elucidation of legal concepts led Hart to the development a new method of definition. It is shown that Hart not only modifies the paraphrase of Jeremy Bentham, but also tries to adapt to the analysis of legal concepts the definition in use borrowed from analytical philosophers and logicians. It has been established that the key point of Hart’s method is that instead of defining a separate term, it is necessary to consider a statement, where the utterance plays a characteristic role, and is explained by specifying the conditions under which the entire statement is true. Some difficulties that arise when one uses this definition in the framework of the truth-conditional semantics are considered. In particular, it is shown that Hart uses open sentences of the form “X has a right” in its definition, which differ from closed sentences, primarily because they contain free variables with indefinite range of values. This uncertainty does not allow us to attribute to them the truth-value. The concepts of truth and falsity apply only to statements that are expressed by closed sentences. Thus, Hart’s claim of a special semantic nature of legal concepts and a special epistemological task of definitions in jurisprudence is reflected in his theory of the truth-conditional definition - a kind of contextual definition.

Sir William Jones, the Jurist

1946 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 807-817 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. G Vesey-Fitzgerald
Keyword(s):  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
English School ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The World ◽  
Ancient Law ◽  
University College London ◽  
Different Parts ◽  
Sir William Jones

In 1946 the School of Oriental and African Studies is celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of Sir William Jones: in 1948 University College, London, will celebrate that of Jeremy Bentham. In this there is something more than an accidental approximation of dates. All subsequent scientific English thinking about law is traceable to these two men. The English School of Analytical Jurisprudence; the great tide of law reform which swept through nineteenth-century England; the codification (the word is his own coinage) of law not only in England and India but in many different parts of the world: these things admittedly sprang from the genius of Jeremy Bentham. Sir William Jones's influence was smaller in volume, though almost as widely diffused. He had neither the apostolic fervour of reform nor the overflowing vitality which carried Bentham on with undiminished vigour to eighty-four years: he died before reaching his forty-seventh birthday. But his influence was, none the less, considerable. The first of our Orientalists who was also a lawyer, Colebrooke, Sutherland, Wynch, and other Sanskritists, the Macnaghtens and the Baillies followed in his footsteps. In particular Colebrooke, greatest of them all, and Ian Baillie came directly under his influence. But it is equally true, though less generally recognized, that he is the forerunner of the other great English school of legal philosophy, the historical and comparative school, and that the work of Sir Henry Maine and his successors might have lacked some of its most distinctive elements if Jones's translation had not rendered the Institutes of Manu available to Maine when he was writing Ancient Law. Indeed, Maine's whole career might have been different; for just as his known interest in Oriental legal systems led to Jones's appointment as a judge of the Supreme Court of Calcutta, so it was the interest in Indian ideas evinced in Ancient Law which led to Maine's appointment as law member of the Governor-General's Council, and so to all his later work on similar topics.

Basic English

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James McElvenny
Keyword(s):  
George Orwell ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
International Language ◽  
Basic English

This chapter explores C. K. Ogden’s project Basic English against the background of the contemporary international language movement. An exposition of the international language movement, its political and philosophical commitments, is followed by an examination of the features of Ogden’s Basic and the rhetoric surrounding it. The connections between the theories developed in The Meaning of Meaning and Basic English are looked at in detail. The chapter closes with a discussion of the influence of Jeremy Bentham and his Panopticon on Basic, and of the reaction of George Orwell to the project, as revealed in his published writings and correspondence with Ogden, and in Newspeak, his parody of constructed languages.

Frieden durch Recht und Öffentlichkeit: Die Hoffnungen und Verwirrungen der ersten Utilitaristen

2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 228-252
Author(s):  
Frédéric Rimoux
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
International Relations ◽  
World Peace ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Collective Security ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Political Realism ◽  
International Thought

The international thought of the early utilitarian thinkers Jeremy Bentham and James Mill remains little known and largely misunderstood. Most commentators give them a superficial appreciation or criticize their supposed naivety, in both cases mostly assuming that Mill borrowed his thoughts from Bentham's writings alone. This questionable reception overlooks some essential aspects of Bentham's and Mill's extensive reflections on war and peace, in particular their constant effort to overcome the tension between individual freedom and collective security. In reality, the fertile dialogue between the two thinkers gradually crystallized into an independent utilitarian peace theory centered on law and public opinion as instruments of an ambitious reform of international relations according to the principle of utility. They managed to elaborate a fragile synthesis between liberal principles and considerations of political realism, which grants their utilitarian peace theory a singular place in the historical efforts to systematically define the conditions of world peace.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document