Born in the third quarter of the 19th century, legal positivism was based on the principles of philosophical positivism of the same name , and was developed mainly in Western Europe and also in Russia. The emergence of the trend is traditionally associated with the name of John Austin, who transformed the well-known postulate into a new theory: "Governance of a country must be formed in such a way that it remains governed."
Right is sovereign power, and nothing more. Any rule or rule becomes a rule of law only under the condition that the will of the sovereign has made it binding on an unlimited number of people. In Russia, the follower of the idea of legal positivism is G. F. Shershenevich, who considered law as a tool that can act as a balance for class contradictions that arose due to heterogeneity in education and welfare. Entering into a confrontation with the generally accepted natural-legal theory at that time, legal positivism refutes the division of the right into positive (dictated by the state and its laws) and natural (granted to man at birth by nature). The only possible and valid law, according to supporters of the theory of legal positivism, is a positive, "positive" right that arises from the individual on the basis of the law - there are no other rights and cannot be.
The theory considers the right, not historical, existing today, it is given the role of a defender of the interests of society and its individual members. Legal positivism does not equate the concept of morality and law, believing that the enforcement of laws, that is, morality, is an internal perception of everyone, and it is the other side of the law, separated from it. At the stage of formation and development of bourgeois relations in society, the growth of commodity-money circulation, the identification of the will of the legislator and law, which proclaimed legal positivism, had a positive impact, it allowed regulating contractual relations from the standpoint of the law.
At the same time, the current did not assign legitimacy to that necessary role among the signs of the state that is declared by modern democratic legislation. Obviously, including for this reason, legal positivism failed to become a full-fledged theory of law, since it was based on a substitute concept that the state is unconditionally legal, and this was repeatedly
disproved by the practice of unjustified violence by the authorities at that time. In addition, the
rule of law implies the supremacy of the will of man and his freedoms.
Positivism rejected
this , because a person was considered only as a subservient member of society, to whom only those rights belonged to which he was vested with by the legislator. Even today, the natural-legal theory does not get tired of arguing with legal positivism, for which the
ability of a person (a person, not just a “thinking animal”) to have their own rights - to life, freedom, health and work, motherhood is essential and self-determination.