Definitions of law typically increase the query of the extent to which law incorporates morality. John Austin’s utilitarian reply was that law is “commands, backed by menace of sanctions, from a sovereign, to whom people have a habit of obedience”. Natural attorneys, however, corresponding to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, argue that law reflects primarily moral and unchangeable laws of nature. The concept of “pure law” emerged in historic Greek philosophy concurrently and in connection with the notion of justice, and re-entered the mainstream of Western tradition by way of the writings of Thomas Aquinas, notably his Treatise on Law.
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