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Hart, Radbruch and the Necessary Connection Between Law and Morals

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Abstract

Legal positivism maintains a distinction between law as it is and law as it ought to be. In other words, for positivists, a law can be legally valid even if it is immoral. H. L. A. Hart hoped to defend legal positivism against natural law. This paper analyses Hart’s criticism of Gustav Radbruch, a natural lawyer, before suggesting that Hart’s account of legal positivism gives rise to a logical problem. It is concluded that this problem leaves logical space for a theory of natural law based on moral authority rather than legal validity.

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Notes

  1. Simon Blackburn, Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 213; H.L.A. Hart, ‘Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals’, Harvard Law Review 71(4) (1958): pp. 593–629.

  2. Hart, ‘Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals’, p. 625.

  3. That is, they were not actually laws.

  4. Gustav Radbruch, ‘Gesetzliches Unrecht und übergesetzliches Rech’, Süddeutsche Juristen–Zeitung 1(5) (1946): pp. 105–108.

  5. Hart, ‘Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals’, p. 625.

  6. Ibid., p. 615.

  7. Ibid., p. 616.

  8. Gustav Radbruch translated in Stanley L. Paulson, “Lon L. Fuller, Gustav Radbruch, and the ‘Positivist’ Theses,” Law and Philosophy 13(3) (1994): pp. 313–359, 317.

  9. Frank Haldemann, ‘Gustav Radbruch vs. Hans Kelsen: A Debate on Nazi Law’, Ratio Juris 18(2) (2005): pp. 162–178, 166.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Stanley L. Paulson, “Lon L. Fuller, Gustav Radbruch, and the ‘Positivist’ Theses”, Law and Philosophy 13(3) (1994): pp. 313–359, 317.

  12. Haldemann, ‘Gustav Radbruch vs. Hans Kelsen: A Debate on Nazi Law’, quoting Robert Alexy, ‘A Defence of Radbruch’s Formula’, in David Dyzenhaus (ed.), Recrafting the Rule of Law: The Limits of Legal Order (Oxford: Hart, 1999), pp. 15–39, 15–16.

  13. Hart, ‘Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals’, p. 617.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Ibid., pp. 617–18.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Ibid., pp. 618.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Hart, ‘Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals’.

  20. Ibid., p. 620. See also H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012), p. 206.

  21. Hart, ‘Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals’, pp. 618–619.

  22. Ibid., p. 619.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Ibid., p. 618.

  27. Hart, ‘Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals’, p. 619.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Ibid.

  30. Ibid.

  31. Ibid.

  32. Ibid.

  33. Hart, ‘Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals’, p. 620.

  34. Ibid., pp. 619–620.

  35. Ibid., p. 620.

  36. Ibid., p. 619.

  37. Ibid., pp. 619–620.

  38. Ibid., p. 621.

  39. Hart, ‘Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals’, pp. 594–598, 600, 606, 608, 612–615, 618, 621, 624–625, 627–629.

  40. Ibid., pp. 601, 601 n. 25, 608, 622–624. See also Hart, The Concept of Law, pp. 185–186.

  41. Fraser MacBride, ‘Relations and Truth-Making’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 111 (2011): pp. 159–176, 161, 168. See also Keith Campbell, Abstract Particulars (London: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 111.

  42. Hart, ‘Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals’, pp. 594–598, 600, 606, 608, 612–615, 618, 621, 624–625, 627–629.

  43. Roderick A. Girle, Logic: A Teach Yourself Text, vol. 1, Propositional Logic (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1991), p. 234.

  44. Fraser MacBride, email message to author, May 2, 2019.

  45. Nonexistent, or Meinongian, objects are posited by some logicians. See, e.g., Alexius Meinong, ‘On the Theory of Objects’, in Roderick Chisholm (ed.), Realism and the Background of Phenomenology (Glencoe: Free Press, 1960), p. 76.

  46. Fraser MacBride, email message to author, May 2, 2019.

  47. Terence Parsons, ‘A Meinongian Analysis of Fictional Objects’, Grazer Philosophische Studien 1(1) (1975): pp. 73–86, 78.

  48. Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Cambridge: William Rehg trans, MIT Press, 1998), p. 107.

  49. Hart, ‘Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals’, pp. 618, 620.

  50. Nicholas J.J. Smith, Logic: The Laws of Truth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), pp. 28–29.

  51. Ibid.

  52. Ibid., p. 181.

  53. Hart, ‘Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals’, p. 601 n. 25.

  54. Benjamin C. Zipursky, ‘Practical Positivism versus Practical Perfectionism: The Hart–Fuller Debate at Fifty’ New York University Law Review 83(4) (2008): pp. 1170–1212, 1182.

  55. See, e.g., Leslie Green, ‘Positivism and the Inseparability of Law and Morals’, New York University Law Review 83(4) (2008): pp. 1035–1058, 1035.

  56. John Gardner, Law as a Leap of Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 20.

  57. Ibid., p. 49.

  58. Ibid., p. 21.

  59. Ibid., p. 48.

  60. Ibid.

  61. Hart, The Concept of Law, p. 17.

  62. Ibid., Ch 9.

  63. Ibid., pp. 17, 103, 156–157, 185–186, 202–205, 207.

  64. Ibid.

  65. Hart, The Concept of Law, pp. 185–186.

  66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Leibniz: Philosophical Essays (Cambridge: Hackett Classics, 1989), p. 46. The actual world is, of course, a possible world.

  67. Saul A. Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), p. 39.

  68. Ibid., p. 125.

  69. Hart, The Concept of Law, pp. 194–195.

  70. Ibid., pp. 203, 232, 235.

  71. This objection was given by an anonymous interlocutor.

  72. Hart, ‘Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals’, pp. 618, 620.

  73. Simon Blackburn, Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 251.

  74. Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Cambridge: William Rehg trans, MIT Press, 1998), p. 256.

  75. J.G. Moore, ‘Habermas on Justice’, The Journal Jurisprudence 29 (2016): pp. 13–28.

  76. Ibid., p. 626.

  77. Ibid.

  78. Ibid., pp. 612–615.

  79. John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 360–361.

  80. Gardner, Law as a Leap of Faith, p. 48.

  81. Hart, ‘Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals’, p. 618.

  82. W.J. Waluchow, Inclusive Legal Positivism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 3.

  83. Ibid.

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    J. G. Moore

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Moore, J.G. Hart, Radbruch and the Necessary Connection Between Law and Morals. Law and Philos 39, 691–704 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10982-020-09382-7

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