Introduction

Hegel's legal philosophy has been categorized in various ways. Different commentators claim Hegel's theory endorses natural law, legal positivism, the historical school of jurisprudence, a precursor of Marxist legal theory, postmodern critical theory or even transcendental idealist legal theory. In my previous work, I have argued that Hegel's legal philosophy occupies a space in between natural law and legal positivism. I no longer hold this view and present a new picture of Hegel's legal theory in this chapter.

I will defend the position that Hegel is a natural lawyer, although not of a more familiar variety. Natural lawyers argue that there is an external standard or set of standards which we can employ to assess the justice of our positive, or written, laws. Hegel's natural law differs from these accounts insofar as he uses instead an internal standard of justice that is immanent to law. Whilst most natural law proponents endorse an externalist natural law, Hegel endorses an internalist natural law. On this score, Hegel's views present a major break from the main jurisprudential traditions, which would then explain the enormous difficulty commentators have had in classifying Hegel's views within any of the main traditions.

The chapter will be organized in the following way. First, I will explain the primary features of the natural law tradition followed by a consideration of how closely Hegel's theory of law resembles this general perspective.