Fifty years on from its original publication, HLA Hart's The Concept of Law is widely recognized as the most important work of legal philosophy published in the twentieth century, and remains the starting point for most students coming to the subject for the first time. In this third edition, Leslie Green provides a new introduction that sets the book in the context of subsequent developments in social and political philosophy, clarifying misunderstandings of Hart's project and highlighting central tensions and problems in the work.

More than 50 years after it was first published, The Concept of Law remains the most important work of legal philosophy in the English-speaking world. In this volume, written for both students and specialists, 13 leading scholars look afresh at Hart's great book. Unique in format, the volume proceeds sequentially through all the main ideas in The Concept of Law: each contributor addresses a single chapter of Hart's book, critically discussing its arguments in light of subsequent developments in the field. Four concluding essays assess the continued relevance for jurisprudence of the 'persistent questions' identified by Hart at the beginning of The Concept of Law. The collection also includes Hart's 'Answers to Eight Questions', written in 1988 and never before published in English. Contributors include Timothy Endicott, Richard HS Tur, Pavlos Eleftheriadis, John Gardner, Grant Lamond, Nicos Stavropoulos, Leslie Green, John Tasioulas, Jeremy Waldron, John Finnis, Frederick Schauer, Pierluigi Chiassoni and Nicola Lacey.

H.L.A. Hart was the pre-eminent legal philosopher of the twentieth century. As a scholar he single-handedly reinvented the philosophy of law and revolutionized our understanding of law as a social institution. Hart's approach to legal philosophy was at once disarmingly simple and breathtakingly ambitious, combining the insights of the Utilitarian tradition and the new linguistic philosophy of J.L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein. He sought to elucidate a concept of law that would be of relevance to all forms of law, wherever or whenever they arose. This book is both an intellectual and a psychological biography, following his life from modest origins as the son of Jewish tailor parents in Yorkshire to worldwide fame as the most influential English-speaking legal theorist of the post-War era. It traces his successive metamorphoses; from Yorkshire schoolboy to Oxford scholar, successful barrister, intelligence officer, philosopher, and, finally, Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford. Nicola Lacey draws upon Hart's previously unpublished diaries and letters to reveal a complex interior life. Outwardly successful, Hart was in fact tormented by doubts about his intellectual abilities, his sexual identity and his capacity to form close relationships. Her biography also sheds fascinating light on the origins of his ideas, and assesses his overall contribution to the philosophy of law. Above all, it is a chronicle of a life which made an impact far greater than many of us realize.

This important collection of essays includes Professor Hart's first defense of legal positivism; his discussion of the distinctive teaching of American and Scandinavian jurisprudence; an examination of theories of basic human rights and the notion of "social solidarity," and essays on Jhering, Kelsen, Holmes, and Lon Fuller.

This incisive book deals with the use of the criminal law to enforce morality, in particular sexual morality, a subject of particular interest and importance since the publication of the Wolfenden Report in 1957. Professor Hart first considers John Stuart Mill's famous declaration: "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community is to prevent harm to others." During the last hundred years this doctrine has twice been sharply challenged by two great lawyers: Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, the great Victorian judge and historian of the common law, and Lord Devlin, who both argue that the use of the criminal law to enforce morality is justified. The author examines their arguments in some detail, and sets out to demonstrate that they fail to recognize distinction of vital importance for legal and political theory, and that they espouse a conception of the function of legal punishment that few would now share.

H.L.A. Hart is among the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, with an especially great influence on the philosophy of law. His 1961 book The Concept of Law has become an enduring classic of legal philosophy, and has also left a significant imprint on moral and political philosophy. In this volume, leading contemporary legal and political philosopher Matthew H. Kramer provides a crystal-clear analysis of Hart’s contributions to our understanding of the nature of law. He elucidates and scrutinizes every major aspect of Hart’s jurisprudential thinking, ranging from his general methodology to his defense of legal positivism. He shows how Hart’s achievement in The Concept of Law, despite the evolution of debates in subsequent decades, remains central to contemporary legal philosophy because it lends itself to being reinterpreted in light of new concerns and interests. Kramer therefore pays particular attention to the strength of Hart’s insights in the context of present-day disputes among philosophers over the reality of normative entities and properties and over the semantics of normative statements. This book is an invaluable guide to Hart’s thought for students and scholars of legal philosophy and jurisprudence, as well as moral and political philosophy.

This classic collection of essays, first published in 1968, has had an enduring impact on academic and public debates about criminal responsibility and criminal punishment. Forty years on, its arguments are as powerful as ever. H.L.A. Hart offers an alternative to retributive thinking about criminal punishment that nevertheless preserves the central distinction between guilt and innocence. He also provides an account of criminal responsibility that links the distinction between guilt and innocence closely to the ideal of the rule of law, and thereby attempts to by-pass unnerving debates about free will and determinism. Always engaged with live issues of law and public policy, Hart makes difficult philosophical puzzles accessible and immediate to a wide range of readers. For this new edition, otherwise a reproduction of the original, John Gardner adds an introduction engaging critically with Hart's arguments, and explaining the continuing importance of Hart's ideas in spite of the intervening revival of retributive thinking in both academic and policy circles. Unavailable for ten years, the new edition of Punishment and Responsibility makes available again the central text in the field for a new generation of academics, students and professionals engaged in criminal justice and penal policy.