Legal philosophy in the context of "John Rawls"

A legal system is a set of legal norms and institutions and processes by which those norms are applied, often within a particular jurisdiction or community. It may also be referred to as a legal order. The comparative study of legal systems is the subject matter of comparative law, while the definition of legal systems in the abstract has been largely the domain of legal philosophy. Although scholarship has largely focused on national legal systems, many other distinct legal systems exist; for example, in Canada, in addition to the Canadian legal system there are numerous Indigenous legal systems.

The term "legal system" is often used to refer specifically to the laws of a particular nation state. Some countries have a single legal system, while others may have multiple overlapping legal systems arising from distinct sources of sovereign authority, as is often the case in federal states. In addition, different groups within a country are sometimes subject to different legal systems; this is known as legal pluralism. International law is also sometimes classified as a legal system, but this classification is disputed.

Prohibitionism is a legal philosophy and political theory often used in lobbying which holds that citizens will abstain from actions if the actions are typed as unlawful (i.e. prohibited) and the prohibitions are enforced by law enforcement. This philosophy has been the basis for many acts of statutory law throughout history, most notably when a large group of a given population disapproves of and/or feels threatened by an activity in which a smaller group of that population engages, and seeks to render that activity legally prohibited.

David O. Brink (born 1958) is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. He works in the areas of moral, political, and legal philosophy.

Joseph Raz FBA (/rɑːz/; Hebrew: יוסף רז; born Joseph Zaltsman; 21 March 1939 – 2 May 2022) was an Israeli legal, moral and political philosopher. He was an advocate of legal positivism and is known for his conception of perfectionist liberalism. Raz spent most of his career as a professor of philosophy of law at Balliol College, Oxford, and was latterly a part-time professor of law at Columbia University Law School and a part-time professor at King's College London. He received the Tang Prize in Rule of Law in 2018.

A determinatio is an authoritative determination by the legislator concerning the application of practical principles, that is not necessitated by deduction from natural or divine law but is based on the contingencies of practical judgement within the possibilities allowed by reason. The concept derives from the legal philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, and continues to be a part of discussions in natural law theory.

In natural law jurisprudence, determinatio is the process of making natural law into positive law.