British legal philosopher John Austin (1790-1859) is noted for providing the terminology necessary to analyze the interrelationship between ethics and proper law that has evolved into the modern field of jurisprudence.

A friend of noted nineteenth-century Utilitarian thinkers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, British attorney and educator John Austin became well-known for his attempt to provide an easily understandable ethical framework that could establish the rule of law as distinct from the rule of "God" and Christian morality. Although they were little discussed during his own lifetime, Austin's writings, such as his 1832 work The Province of Jurisprudence Determined, paved the way for the more recent development of the school of analytical jurisprudence. As one of the foremost promoters of legal positivism, Austin argued that law, as opposed to moral imperatives, should be viewed simply as a form of command, made by an acknowledged and legitimate ruler, that...