Chapter 7: Formalism and Rule-Scepticism

Part 1 (The Open Texture of Law): Hart starts the chapter by saying that laws should pertain to specific classes of persons or acts, instead of focusing on each individual separately, since laws require certain conducts for each class given the multitude of individuals. He talks about two principal devicesfor the communication of such general standards of […]

Chapter 6: The Foundations of a Legal System

Part 1 (Rule of Recognition and Legal Validity): Hart started this chapter by saying that the social situation where three is a group habitually obeying orders backed by threats of the sovereign person/s is both a necessary and a sufficient condition of the existence of law. Though may be considered limited, it gives us a glimpse […]

Chapter 5: Law as the Union of Primary and Secondary Rules

Part 1 (A Fresh Start): In the previous chapters, a simple model of law as the sovereign’s coercive orders was shown to have failed in reproducing some of the salient features of a legal system, since some features of municipal law in a modern state were either distorted or altogether unrepresented. This theory failed in four (4) ways. First, […]

Chapter 4: Sovereign and Subject

The chapter starts by characterizing Sovereignty as a person or body of persons whose orders the great majority of the society habitually obey and who does not habitually obey any other person or persons. The doctrine of sovereigntyasserts that in a every human society, be it a democracy or a monarchy, there is a simple relationship between subjects […]

Chapter 3: The Variety of Laws

The chapter starts by stating that there are different kinds of laws that transcend beyond last chapter’s model of a general order. Hart divided them into three (3) categories, namely Content of the Law, Mode of Origin, and Range of Application. In Chapter 3, these types will be discussed separately, leaving to the next chapter a more fundamental […]

Chapter 2: Laws, Commands, and Orders

Part 1 (Varieties of Imperatives): The chapter opens with the statement that the next two chapters will be on the criticism of a theory that of Austin’s, which is characterized as a theory which has perennial attractions whatever its defects may be. The imperative moodis roughly discriminated into ‘please,’ ‘plea,’ or ‘warnings.’ A pleaseis one in imperative […]

Chapter 1: Persistent Questions

Part 1 (Perplexities of Legal Theory): The author opens the chapter by asking the question What is Law?, and how a lot of literature are dedicated in answering such perplexing question, especially when compared to other fields such as Medicine and Chemistry, which he poses do not dwell much on such question. Ordinarily, the question of what law is […]

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Welcome to the Blog

This blog is dedicated to the work of the legal theorist Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart, particularly his book entitled The Concept of Law. In this blog, you will find the summaries of the book’s chapters, which you may find helpful in your search for the answer to the question What is Law? Hope you find […]