I owe thanks to the CJLJ referees and, likewise, to TT Arvind, Tom Bennett, Emilia Mickiewicz, Patrick O'Callaghan, and Ole Pedersen for their criticisms of earlier drafts of this essay. I am also grateful to those who offered criticisms when I presented earlier versions of this essay in a seminar organised by the Newcastle Ethics, Legal, and Political Philosophy Group in November 2012, and in a symposium, led by Professor Geoffrey Samuel, on the question ‘Is Legal Knowledge Cumulative?’ (Newcastle Law School, February 2013).

1. Simpson, AWB, Reflections on The Concept of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) at 124 CrossRefGoogle Scholar [Reflections]. See also Berlin, I, The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays , ed by Hardy, H (London: Pimlico, 1998) at 436.Google Scholar

2. Passages in Simpson’s book suggest a degree of ambiguity on the question as to whether Hart’s concern with legal rules or his concern with law as a system makes him a hedgehog. See Reflections, supra note 1 at 116 (on legal rules as Hart’s ‘central’ concern) and 138 (on legal systematicity). However, other passages in Simpson’s book make it clear that he regards legal rules and systematicity as the centre of gravity in Hart’s exposition. This is because legal systems come into existence as a result of the relationship between particular types of rule. Ibid at 140.

3. Ibid at 125,138-40.

4. While we cannot pursue the point in detail, Simpson makes responses to the later writings of Wittgenstein that make plain his desire to prompt a downward revision in his standing as well as that of Hart. See, for example, ibid at 49 (on the ‘Wittgenstein industry’), at 102 (on Wittgenstein’s ‘ridiculous’ view that games exhibit ‘family resemblances’) and 152, n 21 (‘Wittgenstein had virtually nothing of interest to say which might be applied to the law’).

5. Ibid at 1. Simpson’s references (and those in this response to him) are to Hart, HLA, The Concept of Law, 2d ed (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994, with a Postscript edited by Bulloch, A & Raz, J)Google Scholar. (In 2012, Clarendon Press published a third edition of Hart’s book, with an introduction by Leslie Green).

6. Reflections, supra note 1 at 204-06.

7. Ibid at 204.

8. See, for example, ibid at 176-77 (where Simpson argues that Hart’s account of the transition from the pre-legal to a legal world is ‘derivative’ since it bears ‘striking’ similarities to that in John Locke’s account of movement from a state of nature to civil society). See also 78, 172.

9. Ibid at 153.

10. Ibid at 8, 12.

11. Ibid at 6.

12. Ibid at 158. See also 149.

13. Ibid at 78.

14. Ibid at 6.

15. Ibid at 6, 140-41, 183.

16. Ibid at 3.

17. Ibid at 18. See also Collini, S, Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain 1850-1930 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991) at 266-68Google Scholar.

18. Reflections, supra note 1 at 21-22.

19. Ibid at 61 and Lacey, N, A Life of H.L.A. Hart: The Nightmare and the Noble Dream (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) 151 Google Scholar (on Hart’s commitment to ‘the standards of analytic philosophy’). See also Schauer, F, ‘Book Review: (Re)Taking Hart’ (2006) 119 Harv LR 852, 857-62Google Scholar (describing Hart as ‘philosophizing’ Oxonian jurisprudence).

20. Reflections, supra note 1 at 28ff. See also Simpson, AWB, ‘Herbert Hart Elucidated’ (2006) 104 Michigan LR 1437, 1443, n 31Google Scholarand associated text.

21. Reflections, supra note 1 at 29-30.

22. Ibid at 30.

23. Ibid at 114 (discussing J Salmond, On Jurisprudence, 11th ed by G Williams (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1957)).

24. Ibid at 114 (discussing J Salmond, The First Principles of Jurisprudence (London: Stevens & Haynes, 1893) at 219-20).

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid at 114-15 (where Simpson also conveys the im Pression that Hart grudgingly acknowledged the value of Salmond’s contribution by describing his ‘conception of “ultimate legal principles”‘ as ‘insufficiently elaborated’). See also Hart, supra note 5 at 292.

27. Ibid at 147-48.

28. Simpson states that the distinction between core and penumbra ‘seems to originate with Hart’. See Reflections, supra note 1 at 117. Cf Bix, B, Law, Language, and Legal Determinacy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) at 10 Google Scholar, n 21 (noting that this distinction may have its roots in Russell, B, ‘Vagueness’ in Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, ed by Slated, J (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), vol IX at 149)Google Scholar.

29. Reflections supra note 1 at 47, 93.

30. Ibid at 124.

31. Berlin, supra note 1 at 437.

32. Reflections, supra note 1 at 124.

33. Ibid at 125.

34. Ibid.

35. Berlin, supra 1 at 437. Cf Berlin, I, The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas (London: Pimlico, 2003) at 24 Google Scholar (arguing that ‘oversimplification … often serves to crystallise the issues’).

36. Reflections, supra note 1 at 125. (Berlin’s misgivings about the hedgehog/fox distinction appear in the paragraph following the one from which Simpson takes the quotations we noted earlier (supra notes 30, 32, 33, 34).

37. Ibid at 125.

38. Ibid at 128.

39. Ibid at 128, 146.

40. Ibid at 146.

41. Ibid at 156.

42. Ibid at 156.

43. Ibid at 140.

44. Ibid at 79 (discussing Hart, supra note 5 at 239 (Postscript)).

45. Ibid at 50, 71, 92.

46. Ibid at 123, 130. (As well as criticising Hart on account of his hedgehogesque tendencies, Simpson excoriates Grant Gilmore on the same ground. See ibid at 128-29.)

47. Ibid at 125. Simpson identifies his detailed studies in legal history as exercises in ‘foxiness’. See 133-34 (discussing Simpson, AWB, Cannibalism and the Common Law: A Victorian Yachting Tragedy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984)Google Scholar, Simpson, AWB, In the Highest Degree Odious: Detention Without Trial in Wartime Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Simpson, AWB, End of Empire: Britain and the Genesis of the European Convention (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar).

48. Reflections, supra note 1 at 125.

49. Ibid at 136, 138.

50. Ibid at 138.

51. Eagleton, T, The Event of Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012) at 1 Google Scholar, 8.

52. Reflections, supra note 1 at 173. (Simpson’s identifcation of anthropology as a corrective to Hartian jurisprudence bears similarities to the use made by Ernest Gellner of Evans-Pritchard’s writings in his assault on ‘Oxford philosophy’. See Hall, JA, Ernest Gellner: An Intellectual Biography (London: Verso, 2011) at 117-19Google Scholar.)

53. Reflections, supra note 1 at 137-38.

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55. Reflections, supra note 1 at 68.

56. Ibid at 69-70.

57. Ibid at 70 (where Simpson also finds in Oakeshott’s exposition ‘an element of the fraudster and the charlatan’). In light of this outpouring, we might conclude that Simpson sees Oakeshott as a purveyor of ‘bullshit’ in the sense specifed in Frankfurt, HG, On Bullshit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005) at 56 Google Scholar (identifying the bullshitter as one who ‘does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly’).

58. See supra note 42 and associated text.

59. Berlin, supra note 35 at 8, 201. For a more precise definition of uncombinability, see Gray, J, Post-Liberalism: Studies in Political Thought (Routledge: London, 1993) at 301.Google Scholar

60. Berlin, supra note 35 at 55. For a more precise definition of incommensurability than that in Berlin, see Raz, J, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986) at 329.Google Scholar

61. Berlin, supra note 1 at 3ff and Berlin, supra note 35 at 20, 65.

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64. Ibid at 122.

65. Ibid at lii-lix, 131-34.

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69. Berlin, supra note 35 at ch 1.

70. Ibid at 8-9.

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74. Ibid at 115, 119, 157-58, 206, 264, 298, 315-17.

75. Ibid at 273.

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81. Oakeshott, supra note 78 at 259.

82. Oakeshott, supra note 73 at 312-13. See also Oakeshott, supra note 76 at 31 (on the ‘preeminently fluid’ character of tradition).

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84. In bringing Hart together with the two political philosophers we have been considering, we might talk of a Hart-Oakeshott-Berlin-based interdisciplinary theory (or HOBBIT). (See Table below).

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102. Anns v Merton LBC [1978] AC 728, 751-52,Google ScholarPubMed per Lord Wilberforce. The ‘retreat’ from Lord Wilberforce’s approach to duty of care culminated in Murphy v Brentwood DC [1991] 1AC 398. See also Lunney, M & Oliphant, K, Tort Law: Text and Materials, 4th ed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) at 139.Google Scholar

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108. Simmonds, supra note 103 at 158.

109. Ibid at 155, 157.

110. Ibid.

111. Berlin, supra note 63 at 171-72.

112. Oakeshott, supra note 73 at 115, 119, 157-58, 206, 264, 298, 316-17, 319. See also P Franco, supra note 83 at 170.

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146. Many of the most arresting passages in Reflections on The Concept of Law have nothing to do with Hart: e.g., Simpson’s account of a tutorial in Oxford during which his ‘pupil’ persuaded him ‘to devote the allocated time to trying out a high performance car on the Oxford ring road’. We learn that this gave Simpson the opportunity (for the first time in his life) to drive a car at 100mph.

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