Introduction

Abstract

Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart was Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford University from 1952 until 1968. Academically, this was a remarkably productive period of Hart’s life. It saw the publication of Causation in the Law (1959, co-authored with Tony Honoré), The Concept of Law (1961), Law, Liberty, and Morality (1963) and Punishment and Responsibility (1968), containing nine papers published over the preceding decade. But this surge of philosophical activity took a severe toll upon Hart. At its conclusion he felt compelled to resign his chair, deciding to devote the rest of his academic life to the exposition and editing of Jeremy Bentham’s jurisprudential oeuvre.¹ Despite this intention, Hart’s intellectual energy eventually began to recover and in later life he found the will to return to some of the themes of his earlier writings, particularly those explored in The Concept of Law. There is much that is of enduring value in Hart’s later writings. Yet this value is often in the development of older ideas rather than the creation of new theories. And Hart was never again to produce work at the same pace.