H. L. A. Hart - The Concept of Law

Hart's most famous work is The Concept of Law, first published in 1961, and with a second edition (including a new postscript) published posthumously in 1994. 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 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 upon law.
• The idea of the Rule of Recognition, a social rule that differentiates between those norms that have the authority of law and those that do not.
• A late reply (published as a postscript to the second edition) to Ronald Dworkin, who criticized legal positivism in Taking Rights Seriously (1977), A Matter of Principle (1985) and Law's Empire (1986).