NATURE OF LAW

 Law cannot be static.

 In order to remain relevant, Law has to grow
with the development of the society.
 definition of law is ever changing with the
change in society. 
 The definition of law which is considered
satisfactory today might be considered a
narrow definition tomorrow. 
 According to Professor Keeton:

“an attempt to establish a satisfactory

definition of law is to seek, to confine
jurisprudence within a Straight Jacket
from which it is continually trying to
escape.”
 Fixed principles of law.
 Laws provide uniformity and certainty of
administration of justice.
 Law avoids the dangers of arbitrary, biased and
dishonest decisions
 It is not enough that justice should be done but it is
also important that it is seen to be done.
 Law protects the Administration of Justice from the
errors of individual judgments.
 Individual whims and fancies are not reflected in the
judgment of the court that follow the Rule of Law.
 Legislature represents the wisdom of the people.
 Hans Kelsen was an Austrian legal theorist, who
worked in Germany until the rise of the Nazi Party,
and then in the USA.
 He published the first edition of The Pure Theory of
Law in 1934.
 The theory is ‘pure’ because it separates
jurisprudence from other disciplines like ethics,
politics and psychology.
 This is important because different disciplines have
different methodology, and so it’s hard to analyse
law when its all mixed up with other things.
Kelsen’s pure theory allows for a pure ‘legal
science.’
 The word ‘science’ is a translation of the
German Wissenschaft, which
is normally translated as ‘knowledge’ or
‘study,’ and can apply to disciplines like
literary theory.

 The English word ‘science’ is translated into

German as Natur Wissenschaft i.e. ‘natural
science.’
 Kelsen regards Jurisprudence as a normative
science and not a natural science.
 In natural sciences, laws are statements of
the sequence of cause and effect.
 Kelson described law as a “normative science’ as
distinguished from natural sciences which are
based on cause and effect, such as law of
gravitation.
 The laws of natural science are capable of being
accurately described, determined and discovered
in the form of is’ which is an essential
characteristic of all natural sciences.
 But the science of law is knowledge of what law
ought to be. It is the ‘ought’ concept which
provides normative character to law.
 For instance, if ‘A’ commits a theft he ought to
be punished.
 Like Austin, Kelson also considers sanction as an
essential element of law but he prefers to call it
‘norm’.
 Thus according to Kelson, ‘law is a primary norm
which stipulates sanction’.
 It is called positive law because it is concerned
only with actual and not with ideal law.
 According to Kelson, ‘norm (sanction) is rules forbidding
or prescribing a certain behaviour.
 For him, legal order is the hierarchy of norms having
sanction and jurisprudence is the study of these norms
which comprise legal order.
 He distinguishes moral norm from legal norms.
 For example, moral norm says that ‘one shall not steal’
but since it has no punitive consequence, it lacks
coercive force.
 but if it is to be reduced in form of legal norm, it would
say, “if a person steals, he ought ‘to be punished by the
competent organ or State”.
 This ‘ought’ in the legal norm refers to the sanction to
be applied for violation of law.
 The theory is aimed at reducing chaos and
confusion created by the supporters of
natural law philosophy.
 Pure Theory of law deals with the knowledge
of what law is, and it is not concerned about:
what law ought to be.
 The theory considers law as a normative
science and not a natural science.
 It is formal theory confined to a particular
system of positive law as actually in
operation. i.e. What is the law?
WHAT IS PURE SCIENCE?
 Pure Science is a science that derives theories and
predictions.
 Pure Science can also be known as natural Science, basic
science or fundamental science.
 Pure sciences deals with the study of natural phenomena
through observation, experimentation and use of scientific
methods.
 Pure science is often conducted in a laboratory.
 The main objective of pure science is to increase
information of a particular field of study and develop
scientific theories.
 Physics, Chemistry, biology and Mathematics etc are some
of the major streams pursued in Pure Sciences.
 Pure sciences is one of the most interesting and
research oriented fields.
 It plays a crucial role in innovation, new
discoveries and inventions.
 Pure science creates and establishes information
to understand nature.
 It describes the most basic objects, forces,
relations between them and laws governing
them, such that all other phenomena may be in
principle derived from them following the logic
of scientific reductionism.
FEATURES
 A science is a systematic study of a
subject.
 Science establishes the relationship
between cause and effect.
 Science generalises and thereby provides
universal principles.
 It predicts future events.
 Science in its general meaning includes pure
science as well as applied science.
 Science may be positive science or normative
science.
 A positive science may be defined as a body
of systematised knowledge concerning ‘what
is’; a normative science or a regulative
science studies ‘what ought to be’ and
concerned with ideal as distinguished from
the actual.
 Science may be broadly be divided into two
large areas – those that deal with physical
Universe as:
astronomy, physics, chemistry, ecology,
biology and zoology
and the other that deal with the Social
Universe such as history, sociology, politics,
economics, jurisprudence etc.
 LAW IS CONSIDERED BY SOME PERSONS AS
PURE OR POSITIVE SCIENCE.
 The science studying facts is known as positive
science as it explains the facts as they are.
 Arguments in favour:

A. The rules relating to law are uniform and

applicable to all.
B. Law is strictly neutral as regards ends, it
refuses to pass moral judgments.
C. Law takes things as they are.
D. The laws are universal in character.
 However, law, in real sense is not a positive
science but, it is a normative science as:
A. Law is not uniform as they change from
place to place. Laws of different countries
not the same throughout.
B. Law does not contain certain general truth.
Laws are dependent on many factors and
limitations.
C. Laws are made by the legislature but not
dependent on natural phenomena.
D. Laws are not tested in laboratories.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LAW
AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
 There is a close connection between law and social
sciences.
 Laws are the rules and regulations which provides
mechanism to solve the intricate and complex problem
of society.
 Law provides the deep insight into the law of the land,
political factors influencing policies culminating into
law and social science is related to human behavior in
the society and address the problem of the members of
society.
 Thus to study the interpersonal relationships of
members of society the knowledge of law is essential
since it ensure that individual’s rights of the members
of the society are respected.
 Social science has been an important influence on legal
thought since the legal realists of the1930s began to argue
that laws should be socially workable as well as legally
valid.
 With the expansion of legal rights in the 1960s, the law
and social science were bound together by an optimistic
belief that legal interventions, if fully informed by social
science, could become an effective instrument of social
improvement.
 Legal justice, it was hoped, could translate directly into
social justice. Though this optimism has receded in both
disciplines, social science and the law have remained
intimately connected. 
 Social Science, Social Policy, and the Law maps out this
new relationship, applying social science to particular
legal issues and reflecting upon the role of social science
in legal thought.