Background
The book emerged from a set of lectures that Hart began to deliver in 1952, and it is presaged by his Holmes lecture, Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals delivered at Harvard Law School. The Concept of Law developed a sophisticated view of legal positivism.
Among the many ideas developed in this book are:
- A critique of John Austin's theory that law is the command of the sovereign backed by the threat of punishment.
- A distinction between primary and secondary legal rules, where a primary rule governs conduct and a secondary rule allows of the creation, alteration, or extinction of primary rules.
- A distinction between the internal and external points of view of law and rules, close to (and influenced by) Max Weber's distinction between the sociological and the legal perspectives of law.
- The idea of the Rule of Recognition, a social rule that differentiated between those norms that have the authority of law and those that do not. Hart viewed the concept of rule of recognition as an evolution from Hans Kelsen's "Grundnorm", or "basic norm."
- A late reply (1994 Edition) to Ronald Dworkin, who criticized legal positivism in general and especially Hart's account of law in Taking Rights Seriously (1977), A Matter of Principle (1985) and Law's Empire (1986).
Read more about this topic: The Concept Of Law
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