H.L.A. Hart and the Framework of Legal Thought

Chapter 3 analyses H.L.A. Hart's ‘descriptive sociology’. It is shown that his project fails to present more than one description of validity of law among many alternative descriptions, and that he therefore needs to add further arguments to be convincing. (The difficulties encountered in our attempts to specify the rule of recognition makes it difficult to recognize the law that is valid according to Hart's theory. The importance of such validity is therefore questionable.) The ‘framework of legal thought’ that Hart attempts to elucidate only encloses a limited part of law. Unfortunately this makes Hart's theory avoid investigating the parts of the law where analysis is most urgent. It is also shown that Hart's system of rules is inadequate for explaining the obligation associated with the law, as something distinguished from the commands of a gunman.