H.L.A. Hart

Life and ideas

H.L.A. Hart studied classics at Oxford, practised as a barrister, worked in military intelligence during the Second World War and returned to Oxford to teach philosophy and then, from 1952 to 1968, as Professor of Jurisprudence. His The Concept of Law (1961) criticised Austin's theory of commands and offered a new account: law is a union of primary rules, which impose duties, and secondary rules, which empower people to make, change and decide on rules, with a rule of recognition at the base, which officials accept as the test of what counts as law. The book stresses the 'internal point of view' of people who accept rules as standards, not merely as predictions of punishment. Hart also debated Lon Fuller and Lord Devlin on law and morality, and later Dworkin. He insisted that law and morality are conceptually separate even if they often overlap.