A CORNERSTONE OF LEGAL PHILOSOPHY

HART, H.L.A.

The Concept of Law.

Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1961. 8vo. Orig. full black cloth, orig. red, white and black dust-jacket, not price-clipped. A very nice, clean, and fresh copy in an excellent dust-jacket with just a tiny bit of soiling and a few small tears to extremities (no loss). An old owner's name in pencil erased from front free end-paper. A few faint marginal notes in pencil. An excellent copy. X, 263, (1) pp.

The hugely important first edition, review-copy with slip laid in, of Hart's seminal main work, a cornerstone of legal philosophy and probably the most important book in legal philosophy of the 20th century.

The legal philosopher Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart (1907-1992) is famous for his immensely influential contributions to legal philosophy, including his theory of legal positivism, which is developed on the basis of analytic philosophy. By using the tools of analytic philosophy and philosophy of language, clearly inspired by philosophers like Wittgenstein, in his attempts to solve the problems of legal theory, Hart came to revolutionize the way that jurisprudence and philosophy of law is conducted in especially America and Great Britain, and as such, his work is considered the main reason why English-language theory of law is now accepted as a natural part of philosophy.

In 1952 Hart began what is now called his Holmes lecture, "Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals", and it is from this lecture that his masterpiece work "The Concept of Law" emerged. The work was first published, as it is here, in 1961, and numerous issues of it later appeared. In 1994 a new, posthumous, edition was published, establishing the lasting influence of the work.

"The Concept of Law" poses the main question, whether all laws can be understood as being coercive orders or moral commands. It analyses the relation between law, coercion, and morality and comes to the conclusion that there is no logically necessary connection between neither law and coercion nor low and morality. Had one assumed such a necessary connection, Hart claims, one would have oversimplified the relation between the three and would have misunderstood the content, purpose, function and application of a number of laws.

On this basis, Hart develops a distinction between primary and secondary legal rules, the primary rule being that which governs conduct, and the secondary rule being that which allows alterations of the primary one. He furthermore distinguishes between internal and external points of view of law, and not least, he developed the idea of the Rule of Recognition, a central part of his theory of logical positivism, a meta-rule that underlies any legal system and which differentiates between norms that have authority of law and those that do not. The Rule of Recognition identifies legal validity within the legal system.

"The Concept of Law" must be said to be the most important and original work of 20th century legal philosophy. Though Hart's contribution to the study of jurisprudence and legal philosophy has been enormous in general, "The Concept of Law" occupies a seminal place within this study and is considered his absolute masterpiece. Its influence has been enormous, and a huge growth in the quantity of scholarship of the area of jurisprudence and legal thought can be traced directly back to this work.

Hart's combination of twentieth-century analytic philosophy with the jurisprudential tradition of Jeremy Bentham has had an immense influence on legal though and continues to have so. Most important legal scholars of the 20th century are influenced by Hart in one way or the other, for instance John Rawls, and Ronald Dworkin, who, however, disagrees with his theories.

Order-nr.: 50114