"The concept of law" revisited

• Main Author: PHANG, Andrew B.L.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 1995
• Subjects: Legal History; Public Law and Legal Theory
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sol_research/4223; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sol_research/article/6181/viewcontent/1995JSAfrL403.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

On any view, Hart is one of (if not the) leading jurists in Anglo-American legal philosophy this century. His central work, The Concept of Law,' is prescribed reading in virtually every jurisprudence course around the world. He has also been involved in the most famous debates in Anglo-American legal philosophy: the Hart-Fuller debate on the separation of law from morality; 2 the Hart-Devlin debate on the enforcement of morals;3 and the Hart-Dworkin debate on judicial discretion 4 -and it ought to be mentioned that it was precisely these debates that forced all three of these jurists to construct their own substantive theories; 5 in this sense, therefore, Hart's influence has travelled far beyond the boundaries of his own (already substantial) work. All this is in addition to his various other works, most of which are now to be found (together with some others cited in the preceding notes) in two volumes of essays. 6 As might be expected, the literature generated by both Hart's works as well as perceptive critiques has been enormous 7 -and continues to be so, for the foundations he has laid are so basic as to touch on virtually every aspect of the Anglo-American jurisprudential landscape. Indeed, even the radical scholars who eschew a positivist (indeed, any theoretical) approach towards the law8 must grapple at the threshold with Hartian arguments if their more critical enterprise is to take off the ground at all.