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104 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1080 (1955-1956)
Modern Analytical Jurisprudence and the Limits of Its Usefulness

handle is hein.journals/pnlr104 and id is 1106 raw text is: [Vol. 104 MODERN ANALYTICAL JURISPRUDENCE AND THE LIMITS OF ITS USEFULNESS Edgar Bodenheimer t In 1953, Professor Herbert Hart, the present holder of the Regius Chair for Jurisprudence at the University of Oxford, delivered his inaugural address under the title Definition and Theory in Juris- prudence.' In this paper, Professor Hart undertook the task of re- examining certain questions which have always stood in the forefront of the interest of those jurisprudential scholars who customarily are classified as analytical jurists. These questions-to use Professor Hart's own words-may be characterized as requests for definitions; typical examples are: What is law? What is a state? What is a right? What is possession? What is a corporation? I Professor Hart takes the view in his address that the mode of defining these terms which was common in analytical jurisprudence of the past must be considered inadequate and that it should be supplanted by a new look, a method apt to yield more satisfactory results. It is not necessary, Professor Hart believes, to enter into a forbidding jungle of philosophical argument to accomplish this re-orientation in analytical jurisprudence. He also expresses doubts as to why it should be essential for the pursuit of this objective to divorce jurisprudence from the study of law at work. He cannot see any justification for the rise of whole schools of jurisprudence combating each other for no better purpose than to answer a few innocent questions which, in his opinion, can be handled easily by a developed legal system without assuming this incubus of theory. 3 Also, he does not advocate going outside the boundaries of pure legal reasoning, apparently believing that law is a self-contained science which does not need the assistance of other social disciplines for its proper functioning.4 Professor Hart sees the main drawback of the older analytic ap- proach in the attempt to supply dictionary-like definitions of funda- 1 Professor of Law, University of Utah. This paper was presented in a sym- posium on Jurisprudence at the meeting of the Association of American Law Schools, December 29, 1955. 1. Hart, Definition and Theory in Jurisprudence, 70 L.Q. REv. 37 (1954). 2. Id. at 37, 39. 3. Id. at 39. 4. Id. at 37: [Llegal notions . . . can be elucidated by methods properly adapted to their special character. See also id. at 57. (1080)

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