PHILOSOPHY: the study of ideas about knowledge, truth, the nature and meaning of life.

ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORD ‘PHILOSOPHY’: the English word ‘philosophy’ was derived from the Greek word philos,
which means ‘love’ and the Greek word sophia, which means ‘wisdom’. (love of wisdom)

LOVE OF WISDOM: asking, understanding, and arguing to seek an answer.

LAW: is a system of rules that are created and enforced through social or governmental institutions to regulate
behavior.
1. rule of conduct
2. just
3. obligatory
4. prescribed by legal authority
5. common benefit or common good

TYPES OF LAWS
1. Eternal Law: laws that have applied since the beginning of time and would exist till the end of time. (e.g. law of
gravity)
2. Divine Law: laws made by a deity to govern the affairs of man. (e.g. Quran)
3. Natural Law: law that is innate in all mankind and can be deduced through the use of reason (e.g. murder is
wrong and should be punished).
4. Positive Law: laws made by man in order to guide the conduct of members of the society.

SOURCES OF LAW
1. Primary Legislation (or Statutes): laws enacted by the legislative branch.
2. Secondary Legislation (Delegated Legislation or Subordinate Legislation): legally enforceable administrative or
executive regulations and procedures.
3. Case Law (or Precedent): a principle or rule established in a previous legal case that is either binding on or
persuasive for a court or tribunal when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts.
4. Constitutional Convention: an informal and uncodified procedural agreement that is followed by the
institutions of the state (for example, parliamentary conventions in the legislature).
5. Custom: an action or way of behaving that is usual and traditional among the people in a particular group or
place.
6. Books of Authority: legal works and textbooks that are commonly cited by the courts and in the legal
profession.

PHILOSOPHY OF LAW: a branch of philosophy that examines the nature of law, and the relationship of law to other
systems of norms, especially ethics and political philosophy.
1. Analytic Jurisprudence: seeks to provide a general account of the nature of law through the tools of conceptual
analysis.
2. Normative Jurisprudence: involves normative, evaluative, and otherwise prescriptive questions about the law.

JURISPRUDENCE (or LEGAL THEORY): the study of the nature of law in its most general form and provide a deeper
understanding of legal reasoning, legal system, legal institution, and the role of law.

SCHOOLS OF LAW (Analytic Jurisprudence)

1. Historical School: the law is to be seen as the expression of the convictions of the people, in the same manner
as language, customs and practices are expressions of the people.
2. Legal Positivism: laws are commands of human beings, there is no necessary connection between law and
morality, and moral judgments cannot be established or defended by rational argument, evidence, or proof.
3. Natural Law Theory: the law is based on the concept of justice and morality which are believed to be immanent
in nature.
 4. Constructivism: the law is based on the knowledge and understanding constructed by the people through their
experience which is often determined by their social and cultural environment and its development.
5. Legal Interpretivism: the law is not a set of given data, conventions or physical facts, but what lawyers aim to
construct or obtain in their practice.
6. Legal Realism: the law is based on what is real and possible in a particular situation to be able to deal with
problems in an effective and practical way, and that jurisprudence should emulate the methods of natural
science and rely on empirical evidence.
7. Pragmatism: the law is based on a reasonable and logical way of dealing with specific situations.
8. Legal Functionalism: the law is based on the functions that law and legal rules serve for society, the branches of
government, interest groups, and other legal actors.
9. Communism:

NORMATIVE THEORIES OF LAW

1. Utilitarianism: the laws should be crafted so as to produce the best consequences. (Jeremy Bentham)
2. Deontology: the laws should protect individual autonomy, liberty, or rights. (Immanuel Kant, Ronald Dworkin)
3. Aretaic Moral Theories (such as virtue ethics): virtue jurisprudence is the view that the laws should promote
the development of virtuous characters by citizens.
4. Critical legal studies: a school of critical theory that claims that the laws are used to maintain the status quo of
society’s power structures, and that the law is a codified form of society’s biases against marginalized groups.
5. Libertarian Theories of Law: the amount of governmental intervention should be kept to a minimum and the
primary functions of law should be enforcement of contracts and social order.

HISTORICAL SCHOOL: it is based on the writings and teachings of Gustav von Hugo and Friedrich Carl von Savigny in
which the basic premise is that law is not to be regarded as an arbitrary grouping of regulations laid down by some
authority. Rather, those regulations are to be seen as the expression of the convictions of the people, in the same
manner as language, customs and practices are expressions of the people.

VOLKSGEIST (or NATIONALGEIST): it refers to the ‘national spirit’ or ‘national character.’

GUSTAV VON HUGO: a German jurist and professor of law at University of Halle.
FRIEDRICH CARL VON SAVIGNY: chair of University of Berlin, German jurist and historian, who said that the customs
are the living law and the task of jurisprudence is to uncover the law.

CONCEPTS OF HISTORICAL SCHOOL

The law originated from the common consciousness of the people.
1. Diwa ng Sambayanan
2. Kautusan ng Sambayanan

COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS: the set of shared beliefs, ideas, and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force
within society. It does not refer to the moral conscience, but to a shared understanding of social norms.

UTILITARIANISM: the law should promote actions that maximizes happiness and well-being of the majority of a
population.

JEREMY BENTHAM: an English philosopher and jurist, founder of modern utilitarianism.

“happiness = common good”

COMMON GOOD: what is shared and beneficial for all or most members of a given community.

NATURALISM
1. That just laws are immanent in nature; that is, they can be “discovered” or “found” but not “created” by such
things as a bill of rights.
2. That laws can emerge by the natural process of resolving conflicts, as embodied by the evolutionary process of
the common law.
 3. That the meaning of law is such that its content cannot be determined except by reference to moral principles.
These meanings can either oppose or complement each other, although they share the common trait that they
rely on inherence as opposed to design in finding just laws.
4. That law is inherent in nature and constitutive of morality, at least in part. On this view, while legislators can
enact and even successfully enforce immoral laws, such laws are legally invalid. The view is captured by the
maxim: an unjust law is not a true law, where ‘unjust’ means ‘contrary to the natural law.’

OVERLAP THESIS: what is law and what the law should be has necessary connection.
Otherwise, separability thesis.

POSITIVISM
1. Laws are commands of human beings.
2. There is no necessary connection between law and morality.
3. Analysis of legal concepts are to be distinguished from the history or sociology of law.
4. Legal system is a closed, logical system which correct decisions can be deduced from predetermined legal rules
without reference to social considerations.
5. Moral judgments, unlike statements of fact, cannot be established or defended by rational argument, evidence,
or proof.

HERBERT LIONEL ADOLPHUS HART: a British legal philosopher, professor of jurisprudence at Oxford University, and
Principal of Brasenose College, who wrote The Concept of Law.

JOHN AUSTIN: an English legal theorist who influenced British and American law with his analytical approach to
jurisprudence.

INTERPRETIVISM
1. Law is not a set of given data, conventions or physical facts, but what lawyers aim to construct or obtain in their
practice.
2. There is no separation between law and morality, although there are differences.
3. Law is not immanent in nature nor do legal values and principles exist independently and outside of the legal
practice itself.