In the overlapping fields of jurisprudence, moral philosophy, and economic theory, as well as in politics, recognizably Benthamic ideas have continued to feature prominently in debate since Bentham's time. In legal theory his most important follower was John Austin, who is commonly seen as the crucial figure in the development of the school of thought known as legal positivism—though H. L. A. Hart has suggested that if Bentham's Of Laws in General had been published earlier that book rather than Austin's less subtle and 'obviously derivative' work would have 'dominated English jurisprudence'. The thought of Hart himself, who is widely regarded as the outstanding legal philosopher in England since the Second World War, has to a large extent been developed on the basis of a critical reconsideration of issues raised by Austin and Bentham. He has departed from one major tenet of the positivist tradition, in regarding Bentham's imperative theory of law—and a fortiori the cruder version of that theory propounded by Austin—as inadequate for analysing the structure and operations of a modern legal system. On the other hand, he has upheld the positivist principle—which can be traced back to Bentham's distinction between the expository and the censorial aspects of jurisprudence—that law should be conceptually distinguished from morals and that analysis of law as it is should be kept separate from judgements about law as it ought to be.
(John Dinwiddy, Bentham, Past Masters, ed. Keith Thomas [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989], 119-20 [italics in original])
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 