John Gardner (Jurisprudence, Oxford) has posted a philosophically informative review of the new biography of H.L.A. Hart by Nicola Lacey (Law, LSE & ANU). I found particularly interesting his astute remarks on questions of jurisprudential methodology (and notwithstanding his utterly unjust remarks about the American Legal Realists!). I most certainly agree (as the handful of readers of my jurisprudential work among you will know) with Professor Gardner's observation that Hart's methodological remarks in The Concept of Law "are distinctly wobbly, although (or because) suggestive of intriguing Quine-versus-Wittgenstein ambivalences lying unresolved." Readers will know how I think they should be resolved.
I can also not resist noting the congruence between Professor Gardner's ultimate verdict, and my recent (and much downloaded!) polemical piece on Dworkin's jurisprudence. Gardner writes: "Dworkin got under Hart's skin [mine too!]. But only Hans Kelsen seriously challenges Hart's claim to be the most important legal philosopher of the twentieth-century."
Professor Lacey, by the way, will be our Leon Green '15 Lecturer in Jurisprudence in the Spring (and will visit my Jurisprudence class to discuss Hart with the students); Professor Gardner was the Green Lecturer last year, as it happens.
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