by a sovereign to members of an independent political society, and backed up by credible threats of punishment or other adverse consequences ("sanctions") in the event of non-compliance. The sovereign in any legal system is the person or group of persons habitually obeyed by the bulk of the population, which does not habitually obey anyone else. A command is a declared wish that something should be done, issued by a superior, and accompanied by threats in the event of non-compliance. Such commands give rise to legal duties to obey. Note that all the key concepts in this account (law, sovereign, command, sanction, duty) are defined in terms of empirically verifiable social facts. No moral judgment, according to Austin, is ever necessary to determine what the law is – though of course morality must be consulted in determining what the law should be. Austin as a utilitarian believed that laws should promote the greatest happiness of society. Criticism Though Austin's brand of legal positivism was greatly influential in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it is widely seen as overly simplistic today. Critics such as H. L. A. Hart have charged that Austin's account fails to recognize that: Law-making powers are dispersed in many modern societies and it is difficult to identify a "sovereign" in Austin's sense. Most legal systems include rules that do not impose sanctions, but empower officials or citizens to do certain things (such as drawing up wills), or specify ways that legal rules may be identified or changed. Those threats do not give rise to obligations. If they did, there would be no essential difference between a gunman's threat ("Your money or your life") and an ordinary piece of legislation. References Further reading External links Spencer about Austin's system: https://web.archive.org/web/20140202205618/http://www.constitution.org/hs/manvssta.txt a short way into essay #4 19th-century British philosophers 1790 births 1859 deaths Philosophers of law Academics of University College London British legal scholars Consequentialists Utilitarians English legal writers People from Creeting St Mary Members of the Inner Temple 19th-century English writers