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Indiana University Studies 
which might be forgiven in view of the present status of 
international law, but it also would not include constitutional 
law and all other law adopted by the people of a country, as 
in the United States, for their own control; and no one can 
contend that these are not law. Hence the proper conclusion 
is that Blackstone’s definition is wrong in this respect. Law 
is not a command. Austin, who followed Blackstone’s defini- 
tion when he said positive law “is set by a monarch or sov- 
ereign member, to a person or persons in a state of subjection 
to its author”, 6 had difficulty in fitting his definition to “laws 
explaining the import of existing positive laws, and the laws 
abrogating or repealing existing positive law”. But Austin’s 
difficulty does not stop here. The notion of a command does 
not generally prevail anywhere in the law. In the realm of 
civil law clearly the law is not issuing commands. It does 
not command people not to commit torts, nor to perform their 
promises, except in a few rare cases. The state has police- 
men, judges, and other officers of the law, but they are not 
ordinarily commanding people what to do and what not to 
do. If people do not do what they legally ought to do they 
may in the course of time feel the strong arm of the state, 
but that is a different thing from a command. In the realm 
of criminal law, the law might very easily have proceeded by 
way of issuing commands, yet even here it did not do so but 
followed the same scheme which it followed in the case of 
civil law. Leon Duguit was right when he said, “Law is not 
the command of a sovereign state, but a by-law governing a 
group.” 7 Hence Blackstone’s definition is incorrect in both 
respects. 
Other definitions of “law” worthy of mention are the fol- 
lowing : 
Law is that part of the established thought and habit which has 
been accorded general acceptance, and which is backed and sanctioned by 
the force and authority of the regularly constituted government of the 
body politic. Wilson. 
The science of law is that organized body of knowledge that has to 
do with the administration of justice by public or regular tribunals in 
accordance with principles or rules of general character and more or 
less uniform application. Pound. 
On the whole the safest definition of law in the lawyer’s sense 
6 1 Austin, Province of Jurisprudence, 2. 
7 32 Yale L. Jour. 425. See also Dillon, Laiv and Jur. of Eng. and Am. 10. 
