Definition of Law & the Difficulty in Defining Law — Jurisprudence Notes

Definition of Law & the Difficulty in Defining Law

Ask ten jurists to define “law” and you will get ten different answers — Austin says a command, Savigny says a national spirit, Holmes says a prediction, Pound says social engineering. That very disagreement is the answer to the question. “Law” resists a single definition precisely because each school looks at it from a different angle, like the blind men describing an elephant by the part each happens to touch.

Why law is hard to define, and Salmond’s working definition

Everyday hook: think of “sport” — cricket, chess and swimming are all sports, yet no single sentence captures what they share without either leaving something out or letting too much in. “Law” is the same kind of word.

The difficulties in defining law:

• Every school defines it by its own lens. The naturalist defines law by its morality, the positivist by its source (a sovereign command), the historical school by its origin (national spirit), the sociologist by its function (social control), the realist by its effect (what courts do). No definition satisfies all of them.
• Law is constantly changing. It grows and reforms with society, so a definition true in one age is incomplete in the next.
• The word “law” is used in many senses — the law of gravity (a description of nature), moral law, divine law, the law of the land (legal law). A definition must isolate legal law from these.
• Law varies from place to place — what is law in one country is not in another, so a universal definition is elusive.

Salmond’s working definition is the practical anchor most students give: law is “the body of principles recognised and applied by the state in the administration of justice.” In other words, law consists of the rules recognised and acted on by courts of justice. This is useful because it is neither too moral (it does not require law to be just) nor too narrow (it covers judge-applied custom and precedent, not only statute), and it fixes on the one feature all legal rules share — they are the rules the courts will apply.

Other anchors worth a line: Austin — “law is the command of the sovereign backed by a sanction”; Holland — “law is a general rule of external human action enforced by a sovereign political authority.”

Salmond: “Law is the body of principles recognised and applied by the State in the administration of justice.”

In Simple Terms: No single sentence can capture “law” because every school defines it by what it thinks matters most. The safe, practical definition is Salmond’s: law is the set of principles the courts actually recognise and apply.

🧩 WORKED EXAMPLE — Testing a definition against the elephant

Facts. A student offers: “Law is any rule that people obey.”

Rule. A good legal definition must fit legal law and exclude non-legal rules (moral, social, scientific).

Apply. The offered definition is too wide — people obey rules of fashion, etiquette and morality too, yet those are not law. It leaves out the missing feature: recognition and enforcement by the state / courts. Salmond’s definition supplies exactly that.

Conclusion. The test shows why definitions fail (too wide or too narrow) and why Salmond’s court-centred one survives — a neat way to close the answer.

flowchart TD
    L["DEFINING 'LAW'<br/>why it resists one definition"]:::root
    L --> AU["Austin — a sovereign COMMAND"]:::leaf
    L --> SA["Savigny — a national SPIRIT"]:::leaf
    L --> HO["Holmes — a PREDICTION of courts"]:::leaf
    L --> PO["Pound — social ENGINEERING"]:::leaf
    L --> SM["Salmond — principles the STATE applies in justice"]:::dec
    classDef root fill:#FFF8DC,stroke:#000,stroke-width:1px,color:#000;
    classDef leaf fill:#E6F3FF,stroke:#1E3A8A,color:#000;
    classDef dec fill:#FFE8C2,stroke:#B45309,color:#000;
    linkStyle default stroke:#888,stroke-width:1px;

Case Laws

• Vishaka v State of Rajasthan (1997) — the Court treated its own guidelines as “law” until legislation came, showing Salmond’s point that law is what the courts recognise and apply.

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