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Legal positivism and the philosophy of language: a critique of H.L.A. Hart's ‘Descriptive Sociology’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Brendan Edgeworth
Brendan Edgeworth*
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, New South Wales
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Extract

Some years ago, a state-of-play review of the study of Law and Society in Britain by Colin Campbell and Paul Wiles contained the almost rueful comment that ‘analytical jurisprudence and legal positivism… have proved of intimidating endurance as archetypes. As another commentator, Peter Goodrich, has noted recently, Neil MacCormick, one leading authority in the field, rejoined that ‘to confirm or confute these accounts it is necessary to take up some position in analytical philosophy and the philosophy of language. Goodrich's review of linguistics and contemporary legal philosophy indicated that this gauntlet has not been systematically taken up either by legal philosophers or even by those sociologists of law who have been most critical of the general features of legal positivism and the substantive theories legal positivists have themselves proposed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Legal Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , July 1986 , pp. 115 - 139
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Legal Scholars 1986

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References

1. Campbell, Colin and Wiles, Paul, ‘The Study of Law and Society in Britain’ (1976) 10 L and S Rev 547 at p 565.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Goodrich, Peter, ‘The Role of Linguistics in Legal Analysis’ (1984) 47 MLR 523.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. MacCormick, Neil, ‘Challenging Sociological Definitions’ (1977) 4 Brit JL and S 87 at p91.Google Scholar

4. Hugh Collins, Marxism and Law, Oxford: Clarendon (1982). For details of this point, see Alan Hunt, ‘Review of Marxism and Law by Hugh Collins’ (1983) 46 MLR 236.

5. The Concept of Law, Oxford: Clarendon (1961).

6. See, for example, Neil MacCormick's H.L.A. Hart, London: Edward Arnold (1981); G. Gordon, ‘Subjective and Objective Mens Rea’ (1974–75) Crim LQ 357–372.

7. Op cit n 1 supra, p 565.

8. See G.E. Moore, Ethics (1966); Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World (1914).

9. See further, Keith Graham, J.L. Austin: A Critique of Ordinary Language Philosophy, Sussex: Harvester (1977), chapter 1.

10. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Blackwell (1953) p2ff.

11. Op cit n 5 supra, chapter 1.

12. Op cit n 10 supra, p 49.

13. Op cit n 10 supra, p 47.

14. Hart, H.L.A., ‘Analytical Jurisprudence in mid-Twentieth Century: a Reply to Professor Bodenheimer’ (1957) 105 v Pa LR 953 at pp 961–962.Google Scholar

15. Op cit n 5 supra, pp 182–183.

16. Ernest Gellner, Words and Things, Harmondsworth; Penguin (1959), p32.

17. Op cit n 5 supra, chapters 1–3.

18. Op cit n 5 supra, p 7.

19. Op cit n 10 supra, p 43.

20. Op cit n 5 supra, chapter 5.

21. Op cit n 5 supra, p 5.

22. Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks (translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith New York: International (1971), p422. Gramsci's notion of common sense is a technical one and one which is central to his theory of ideology. For an illuminating summary, see the editors' introduction to Prison Notebooks.

23. Op cit n 5 supra, pp 111–112.

24. Op cit n 5 supra, p 14.

25. Alan White, Modal Thinking, Ithaca NY: Cornell UP (1975), p 127.

26. Op cit n 14 supra, p 971.

27. Op cit n 5 supra, chapters 8 and 9.

28. 57 P A S (1956–7), p 11. The patriarchal world view which has moulded language to reflect the interests and concerns of men and the modes of oppression which such language enshrines are, by now, well established. See, for example, Dale Spender, Man made Language, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul (1980).

29. Op cit n 22 supra, p 423.

30. Op cit n 14 supra, p 971.

31. Op cit n 14 supra, p 971.

32. Op cit n 9 supra, p 40.

33. Cited in Eagleton, Terry, ‘Wittgenstein's Friends’ (1982) 135 New Left Rev, p 86.Google Scholar

34. Coward and Ellis, Language and Materialism, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul (1977), p 4.

35. H.L.A. Hart, Essays in Jurisprudence and Philosophy, Oxford: Clarendon (1983), p 6.

36. Ibid..

37. Op cit n 5 supra, p vii.

38. Op cit n 5 supra, p 89.

39. Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul (1959). The argument here draws heavily on Roy Bhaskar's The Possibility of Naturalism, Sussex: Harvester (1979).

40. Op cit n 10 supra, p 43.

41. Op cit n 14 supra, p 975.

42. Hart, ‘Definition and Theory of Jurisprudence’ (1954) 70 LQR 37 at p 56.

43. Op cit n 5 supra, p 38.

44. Hart is not consistent on this point. He also seems to suggest a trichotomy which envisages societies as either pre-legal (no centralised authority); simple legal (an individual ruler issuing commands); and advanced legal: chapters 4–5. This inconsistency is indicative of the weaknesses of his sociology as well as his ordinary language philosophy, for, were he to recognise explicitly these stages of development, then presumably the linguistic dichotomy of oblige/obligation would have to be supplemented by a third normative term.

45. Op cit n 5 supra, p 113.

46. Op cit n 5 supra, p 13.

47. Op cit n 5 supra, p vii.

48. Op cit n 5 supra, p 112.

49. Op cit n 5 supra, p 112.

50. Op cit n 35 supra, p 43.

51. Grant Gilmore, The Death of Contract, Columbus: Ohio State University Press (1974).

52. D.N. MacCormick, H.L.A. Hart, London: Edward Arnold (1982).

53. Op cit n 5 supra, pp 112–113.

54. See, for example, Mill, J.S., Principles of Political Economy, vol II, ch 1.7 (1965); Jeremy Bentham, Collected Works, Bk VII (ed Bowring, ), Edinburgh (1838), pp 270–282.Google Scholar

55. See generally, Max Weber (ed Max Rheinstein), Law in Economy and Society, Cambridge, Mass (1966).

56. Douglas Hay et al, Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth Century England, Harmondsworth: Penguin (1975), pp 1–65. Hay's analysis, it should be noted, is not without its critics. See, for example, Langbein, ‘Albion's Fatal Flaws’ (1983) 98 Past and Present, p 96.

57. Deryck Beyleveld and Roger Brownsword, ‘Law as a Moral Judgment vs. Law as the Rules of the Powerful’ (1984) American JJ, p 79.

58. See, further, M.J. Detmold, The Unity of Law and Morality, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul (1984).

59. Op cit n 56 supra, p 62.

60. Ernest Gellner, ‘The Entry of the Philosophers’ Times Literary Supplement, 4 April 1968.

61. Prosser, Tony, ‘Towards a Critical Public Law’ (1983) 10 J of L and S, pp 1–19.Google Scholar

62. John Austin (ed H.L.A. Hart), The Province of Jurisprudence Determined, London: Wiedenfeld and Nicholson (1955), lecture IV.

63. See Bentham, op cit n 54, supra..

64. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, London: Granada (1975), p 156.

65. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1977).

66. See generally MacCormick, op cit n 52 supra, and Stuart Hall, ‘Reformism and the Legislation of Consent’ in Permissiveness and Control: The Fate of the Sixties Legislation (ed National Deviancy Conference), London: Macmillan (1980), pp 1–36.

67. Alvin Gouldner, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, London: Heinemann (1970) p 346.

68. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1979), vol 1.

69. See further Vandevelde, Kenneth, ‘Changing Property Concepts’ (1979) 29 Buffalo L R, p 325.Google Scholar

70. F.H. Lawson, Introduction to the Law of Property, Oxford: Clarendon (1958), p 16.

71. Cohen, Felix, ‘Transcendental Nonsense and the Functional Approach’ (1935) 35 Co LR, 809 at p 816.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

72. E.P. Thompson, The Poverty of Theory, London: Merlin (1978), p 96.