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The Practice of Fidelity to Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Robert S. Gerstein
Robert S. Gerstein*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Extract

What is it that sets legal systems apart from other kinds of systems of social control? Traditionally, legal philosophers have tried to answer the question in terms of some uniquely essential quality which distinguishes law from everything else. It now seems clear that the concept of law is best understood, not in terms of any single feature to be taken as the essence of law, but as a whole set of family resemblances between the various things we call legal systems (Hart, 1961: 1–17, 234). What I propose to do here is to deal with one particular facet of the concept which, I think, has not been given sufficient attention by the currently dominant positivist school of legal philosophy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 4 , Issue 4 , May 1970 , pp. 479 - 493
Copyright
Copyright © 1970 by the Law and Society Association

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