HLA Hart — The Concept of Law (Clarendon Law Series)

35 published claims from this book.

• A civil norm requires both widespread conformity and public approval of conformity
• A functioning legal system can exist where only officials accept its rules.
• Certain laws provide facilities for realizing wishes instead of imposing duties.
• Compelled compliance under a threat of unpleasant consequences is being obliged.
• Constitutional limits on supreme legislation operate through legal disabilities rather than duties
• Establishment of legal succession requires an accepted rule rather than mere habit
• Formalism disguises the need for judicial choice by freezing rule meaning
• Hart resisted tinkering with his influential text in favor of a postscript
• Hart uses primary and secondary rules distinction inconsistently across multiple dimensions
• Humans face ignorance of facts and indeterminacy of aim when regulating conduct
• Identifying valid legal criteria in any system is an empirical question of fact
• Internal legal statements manifest an accepted shared framework of rules.
• Legal positivism’s state-coercion premise blinds it to Quran-based legal systems.
• Legal rules intentionally incorporate arbitrary detail to maximize certainty and predictability.
• Legal systems rest on customary social rules rather than moral foundations
• Moral rules cannot be created or altered by deliberate human enactment
• Narrow concepts of legal validity fail to prevent official abuse of power
• New states become automatically bound by international law without consenting to it.
• Obligation arises when social pressure and general demand for conformity are intense
• Observers can state facts about rule acceptance without accepting the rules themselves
• Physical sanctions succeed among individuals because physical equality prevents any single group from dominating.
• Popular-consciousness language cannot reveal underlying causes of social trends
• Powerful figures will cross constitutional lines when legal tools prove insufficient for their ambitions
• Primary rules impose duties while secondary rules confer public or private powers
• Private citizens need only obey rules for their own part.
• Reductionist legal theories obscure the diverse functions of rules within a social system
• Sharpened awareness of words sharpens perception of social phenomena.
• So Hart offers a general theory of rules that does not make their authority depend upon the physical power of their authors. If we examine the way different rules come into being, he tells us, and…
• Social rules require a reflective critical attitude toward uniform behavior standards
• State sovereignty is defined and limited by existing international rules.
• The formal principle of justice requires treating relevantly similar cases alike
• The rules that stipulate how Congress is composed, and how it enacts legislation, are examples of secondary rules.
• The rules that stipulate how Congress is composed, and how it enacts legislation, are examples of secondary rules. Rules about forming contracts and executing wills are also secondary rules…
• The ultimate rule of recognition is both law and fact.
• Treaties with chiefs made customary law the federation’s common law