AUSTIN, JOHN

born March 3, 1790, Creeting Mill, Suffolk, Eng. died December 1859, Weybridge, Surrey English jurist whose writings, especially The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832), advocated a definition of law as a species of command and sought to distinguish positive law from morality. He had little influence during his lifetime outside the circle of Utilitarian supporters of Jeremy Bentham. His authority came posthumously. Additional reading John Stuart Mill, Austin on Jurisprudence, in Dissertations and Discussions, vol. 4, pp. 157226 (1874); R.A. Eastwood and G.W. Keeton, The Austinian Theories of Law and Sovereignty (1929); E.M. Campbell, John Austin and Jurisprudence in Nineteenth Century England (1959).