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In municipal systems we tend to view what is called positivism as fundamentally a movement to democratize policy by increasing the power of parliament -- the elected representatives -- at the expense of the more conservative judiciary.

When the power of the latter was made both limited and explicit -- when norms were clarified and made more precise and the creation of new norms was placed exclusively in parliamentary hands -- two purposes were served: Government was made subservient to an institutionalized popular will, and law became a rational system for implementing that will, for serving conscious goals, for embodying the `` public policy ''.

It is true that, initially, the task was to remove restrictions that, it was thought, inhibited the free flow of money, goods, and labor ; ;

but even laissez-faire was a conscious policy.

Law was seen as an emanation of the `` sovereign will ''.

However, the sovereign was not Hobbes' absolute monarch but rather the parliamentary sovereign of Austin.

It was, too, an optimistic philosophy, and, though it separated law from morality, it was by no means an immoral or amoral one.

Man, through democratic institutions of government and economic freedom, was master of his destiny.

The theory did not require, though it unfortunately might acquire, a Hegelian mystique.

It was merely a rationalization and ordering of new institutions of popular government.

It was not opposed to either justice or morality ; ;

it merely wished to minimize subjective views of officials who wielded public authority.