Who was the founder of Analytical School of Law?

Question

The aim of the rules of natural justice is to secure justice or to put it negatively to prevent miscarriage of justice. These rules can operate only in areas not covered by any law validly made. In other words, they do not supplant the law of the land but supplement it. The concept of natural justice has undergone a great deal of change in recent years. In the past, it was thought that it included just two rules namely: (1) no one shall be a judge in his own case (Nemo debet esse judex propria causa) and (2) no decision shall be given against a party without affording him a reasonable hearing (audi alteram partem).
Very soon thereafter a third rule was envisaged and that is that quasi-judicial enquiries must be held in good faith, without bias and not arbitrarily or unreasonably. But in the course of years many more subsidiary rules came to be added to the rules of natural justice. Till very recently it was the opinion of the courts that unless the authority concerned was required by the law under which it functioned to act judicially there was no room for the application of the rules of natural justice. The validity of that limitation is not questioned.
If the purpose of the rules of natural justice is to prevent miscarriage of justice one fails to see why those rules should be made inapplicable to administrative enquiries. Often times it is not easy to draw the line that demarcates administrative enquiries from quasi-judicial enquiries. Enquiries which were considered administrative at one time are now being considered as quasi-judicial in character. Arriving at a just decision is the aim of both quasi-judicial enquiries as well as administrative enquiries. An unjust decision in an administrative enquiry may have more far reaching effect than a decision in a quasi-judicial enquiry as observed by this Court in Suresh Koshy George v. University of Kerala [Civil Appeal No. 990/68, decided on 15-07- 1968], the rules of natural justice are not embodied rules. What particular rule of natural justice should apply to a given case must depend to a great extent on the facts and circumstances of that case, the framework of the law under which the enquiry is held and the constitution of the Tribunal or body of persons appointed for that purpose. Whenever a complaint is made before a court that some principle of natural justice had been contravened the court has to decide whether the observance of that rule was necessary for a just decision on the facts of that case.
[Extract from the judgment of the Supreme Court in A.K. Kraipak v. Union of India, (1969) 2 SCC 262, decided on April 29, 1969, hereafter ‘A.K. Kraipak’].

Answer 1

Each of these four names is tied to a different intellectual tradition, so pinning down which tradition is the "Analytical School" specifically settles the question.

Jhering: belongs to the Sociological School, studying law through its social functions, not the analytical tradition.
Bentham: an important precursor whose ideas fed into legal positivism, but credited as laying groundwork rather than founding the school itself.
John Austin: credited as the actual founder, he gave the Analytical School its systematic form, defining law as the sovereign's command backed by a sanction.
August Comte: founder of sociology and of positivism as a broader philosophy, not specifically of a legal school of jurisprudence.

The correct answer is John Austin.

Answer 2

A useful test here is to ask which of these four thinkers is specifically remembered for building a structured method of analysing law itself, its concepts of rights, duties, and sovereignty, as opposed to studying its social causes or founding an unrelated discipline.

August Comte: his lasting contribution was founding sociology and articulating positivism as a general scientific philosophy, not analysing legal doctrine specifically.
Jhering: his focus was on how law serves social interests and purposes, placing him within sociological jurisprudence rather than the analytical camp.
Bentham: though his utilitarian and reformist writing shaped later positivist thought, historians of jurisprudence usually place the formal founding of the school with the person who structured it into a coherent system.
John Austin: it is Austin who is credited with that systematic structuring, treating law as the sovereign's command enforced by sanction, and methodically dissecting legal concepts, which is why he, rather than his predecessor Bentham, is named the founder.

Judged by who actually built the school's defining method, the founder of the Analytical School of Law is John Austin.

Answer 3

A useful test here is to ask which of these four thinkers is specifically remembered for building a structured method of analysing law itself, its concepts of rights, duties, and sovereignty, as opposed to studying its social causes or founding an unrelated discipline.

August Comte: his lasting contribution was founding sociology and articulating positivism as a general scientific philosophy, not analysing legal doctrine specifically.
Jhering: his focus was on how law serves social interests and purposes, placing him within sociological jurisprudence rather than the analytical camp.
Bentham: though his utilitarian and reformist writing shaped later positivist thought, historians of jurisprudence usually place the formal founding of the school with the person who structured it into a coherent system.
John Austin: it is Austin who is credited with that systematic structuring, treating law as the sovereign's command enforced by sanction, and methodically dissecting legal concepts, which is why he, rather than his predecessor Bentham, is named the founder.

Judged by who actually built the school's defining method, the founder of the Analytical School of Law is John Austin.

Who was the founder of Analytical School of Law?

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The Correct Option is C

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