Legislation
idea · 4 works · 4 mentions · 10 anchored passages
Statute Law · human legislation · law-making · laws · legislation · offences by statute · statute · statutes
in the texts
Ancient Law
Enactments of a legislature deriving binding force from external authority rather than inherent principle.
Augustus caused to be passed the all-important group of Leges Juliæ and among later emperors the most active promulgators of constitutions are princes who, like Constantine, have the concerns of the world to readjust, The true period of Roman Statute Law does not begin till the establishment of the empire.
Cornelius Sylla, by causing to be enacted the great group of statutes called the Leges Corneliœ, had shown what rapid and speedy improvements can be effected by direct legislation.
Legislation, the enactments of a legislature which, whether it take the form of an autocratic prince or of a parliamentary assembly, is the assumed organ of the entire society, is the last of the ameliorating instrumentalities.
Lectures on the Early History of Institutions
The study of law as it ought to be, Bentham's chief concern, contrasted with Austin's jurisprudence.
Bentham is chiefly concerned with law as it might be and ought to be.
An Essay on the Trial by Jury
Legislative enactments used by government to criminalize acts regardless of intrinsic criminality
All the efforts of the government, therefore, to “make offences by statute,” out of acts that are not criminal by nature, must necessarily be ineffectual, unless a jury will declare a man “guilty” for an act that is really innocent.
because the acts forbidden by the statutes were so plainly innocent in their nature, that even the government itself had not the face to allege that the commission of them implied or indicated any criminal intent.
Natural Law, or the Science of Justice
Human-made law and law-making, contrasted throughout with natural law and portrayed as an assumption of dominion by one class over another.
And, consequently, all human legislation is simply and always an assumption of authority and dominion, where no right of authority or dominion exists.
But if, on the other hand, there be in nature no such principle as justice, no such principle as honesty, no such principle as men’s natural rights of person or property, then all such words as justice and injustice, honesty and dishonesty, all such words as mine and thine, all words that signify that one thing is one man’s property and that another thing is another man’s property, all words that …
All this, and nothing less, is involved in the very idea that there can be any such thing as human legislation that is obligatory upon those upon whom it is imposed.