About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

119 Harv. L. Rev. F. 95 (2005-2006)
Hart and the Concepts of Law

handle is hein.journals/forharoc119 and id is 102 raw text is: HART AND THE CONCEPTS OF LAW Ronald Dworkin* Replying to Frederick Schauer, (Re)Taking Hart, iug HARV. L. REV. 852 (2006) (reviewing NICOLA LACEY, A LIFE OF H.L.A. HART: THE NIGHTMARE AND THE NOBLE DREAM (2004)). Professor Frederick Schauer's review of Professor Nicola Lacey's recent biography of H.L.A. Hart ignores the personal issues in Hart's life on which other reviewers have focused to offer some highly inter- esting comments on the state of jurisprudence in Anglophone law schools. He suggests, first, that though Hart benefited the subject by making it more philosophical, one unfortunate consequence of that shift is the impoverishment of the empirical side of jurisprudence; sec- ond, that jurisprudence since Hart has been dominated by adjudica- tion, in which he had little interest, at the expense of Hart's most im- portant insight; and, third, that an important difference exists between the normative arguments that Hart's earliest arguments deployed and the purely descriptive and analytic arguments he later came to favor. I. PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Professor Schauer tells the following story: Before Hart published his most influential book, The Concept of Law, jurisprudence courses were often taught by non-philosophers (like Arthur Goodhart, Hart's predecessor in the Chair of Jurisprudence at Oxford, and Lon Fuller, who taught jurisprudence for many years at Harvard). They wrote and taught with a lawyer's sense of craft and common sense. Hart changed that tradition by bringing to legal theory the techniques of ordinary language philosophy which then dominated philosophy at Oxford and by carefully avoiding any empirical issues that his theories might have been thought to raise. In consequence, Schauer thinks, later legal theorists have thrown themselves into abstract philosophy and neglected empirical research and the ordinary facts of legal life. Schauer exaggerates the extent to which most courses in jurispru- dence have become courses in technical philosophy and also the extent to which Hart is responsible for such philosophical character as the * Frank H. Sommers Professor of Law, New York University Law School and Jeremy Ben- tham Professor of Law, University College, London. 1 Frederick Schauer, (Re)Taking Hart, 119 HARV. L. REV. 852 (2006) (reviewing NICOLA LACEY, A LIFE OF H.L.A. HART: THE NIGHTMARE AND THE NOBLE DREAM (2004)). 95

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most