H.L.A. Hart

1907-1992 · English · Philosophy of Law, Legal Theory, Jurisprudence, Political Philosophy

The existence of law is one thing; its merit or demerit another.

Herbert Hart practiced as a barrister through the 1930s with no intention of becoming a philosopher. Wartime intelligence work — spent in conversation with Gilbert Ryle and Stuart Hampshire — redirected him, and when Oxford's Chair of Jurisprudence fell vacant in 1952 he took it as a philosopher among lawyers.

Topics H.L.A. Hart addresses

• the separability thesis
• the union of primary and secondary rules
• the rule of recognition
• rules of change
• rules of adjudication
• the internal point of view
• open texture
• the penumbra of doubt
• judicial discretion in hard cases
• the minimum content of natural law
• formalism and rule-scepticism
• Austin's command theory
• Kelsen's Grundnorm
• the harm principle
• legal moralism
• positive and critical morality
• the enforcement of morality
• the Hart-Devlin debate
• the Hart-Fuller debate
• the Hart-Dworkin debate
• descriptive jurisprudence
• inclusive legal positivism
• the General Justifying Aim
• the Distribution principle

Converse with H.L.A. Hart on Symposium. Every reply is grounded in H.L.A. Hart's own writing and cites the page it came from. The corpus is public-domain text.