John Austin is widely recognized as the father of English jurisprudence. Building on the work of his friend and mentor Jeremy Bentham, he founded the discipline of analytic jurisprudence and the philosophy of legal positivism. Analytic jurisprudence is the logical elucidation of the concepts of law and legal system and of fundamental legal concepts such as right and duty; with the exception of Bentham, no one in England before Austin had engaged in such a systematic and theoretical investigation into the nature and foundation of law. Legal positivism (not to be confused with philosophical or logical positivism) is the view that law in the proper sense of the term is limited to "positive," or actually existing, law--that is, law laid down by competent political authorities. The roots of legal positivism can be seen in the works of philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, but the theory was first given...