The philosophy of law concerns itself with questions about the nature of law and the concepts that structure the practice of law. Its topics will include the definition of law, or, if strict definition proves unfruitful, descriptions or models of law that throw light on difficult and marginal cases, such as international law, primitive law, and immoral or unjust law. Concepts that require understanding include those of a legal right or duty, of legal action and the place of concepts such as intention and responsibility, the nature of legal reasoning and adjudication, and the overwhelming moral and political importance of the rule of law.

The tradition following Bentham and John Austin, known as legal positivism, is primarily the denial of natural law, or the idea of a God-given or metaphysical authority, for which it substitutes the down-to-earth recognition that law is the command of the sovereign (see positivism, legal). It therefore recognizes a sharp separation between law as it is, and law as it ought to be. Bentham criticized his predecessors, especially the 18th-century jurist Blackstone, for the ‘spirit of obsequious quietism’ visible in the assumption that actual law represented a God-given structure of rights and duties. and saw himself as opening the way to utilitarian criticism of both the content and the ramshackle structure of English law. Although this was denied by Dworkin positivism is hospitable to a connection between a legal system and the wider social and moral circumstances in which it is set. Judicial reasoning, for example, is not and perhaps should not be a self-contained formalistic application of determinate laws in defined ways, but is an exercise of practical reasoning that is, or ought to be, fully open to moral, political, and social claims. Questions belonging not strictly to the philosophy of law but to political philosophy include those of the scope of law, the nature and justification of punishment, and the justification of the legislative and coercive power of the state. These wider concerns include assessing the Marxist critique of law as an instrument of oppression, necessarily reflecting the ideas and therefore the partisan interests of the ruling political class. See also legal realism.

http://www.philosophytalk.org/pastShows/Law.html An audio discussion about philosophy and the law

http://lsolum.typepad.com/legaltheory/ A list of resources on the philosophy of law, including bibliographies