John Austin

John Austin was born to a merchant family on March 3, 1790 in Creeting Mill,Suffolk. He served in the army very briefly before beginning his legal training in 1812. During 1818 to 1825, he practiced unsuccessfully at the chancery bar. His power of cautious investigation and his inflexible intellectual honesty intensely impressed his colleagues, and in 1826, he was appointed to professor of Jurisprudence, a subject that had previously occupied an insignificant place in legal studies. He prepared himself for this position by studying Roman law and German civil law for about a year in Heidelberg and Bonn. John Austin and his wife, Sarah Taylor Austin, were both passionate Utilitarians and they were very much concerned with legal reform. Lectures from the course he gave were eventually published in 1832 as "Province of Jurisprudence Determined." (Austin 1995) However, attendance at his courses was small and getting smaller...