Fifty years on from its original publication, HLA Hart's The Concept of Law is widely recognized as the most important work of legal philosophy published in the twentieth century, and remains the starting point for most students coming to the subject for the first time. In this third edition, Leslie Green provides a new introduction that sets the book in the context of subsequent developments in social and political philosophy, clarifying misunderstandings of Hart's project and highlighting central tensions and problems in the work.

More than 50 years after it was first published, The Concept of Law remains the most important work of legal philosophy in the English-speaking world. In this volume, written for both students and specialists, 13 leading scholars look afresh at Hart's great book. Unique in format, the volume proceeds sequentially through all the main ideas in The Concept of Law: each contributor addresses a single chapter of Hart's book, critically discussing its arguments in light of subsequent developments in the field. Four concluding essays assess the continued relevance for jurisprudence of the 'persistent questions' identified by Hart at the beginning of The Concept of Law. The collection also includes Hart's 'Answers to Eight Questions', written in 1988 and never before published in English. Contributors include Timothy Endicott, Richard HS Tur, Pavlos Eleftheriadis, John Gardner, Grant Lamond, Nicos Stavropoulos, Leslie Green, John Tasioulas, Jeremy Waldron, John Finnis, Frederick Schauer, Pierluigi Chiassoni and Nicola Lacey.

This book brings together the fruits of different traditions in legal philosophy and draws on them to develop a systematic thesis on the concept of law. The work uses a legal model to explore the underlying question of how the current phenomena of transnational law are best understood, in combination with an examination of the traditions of Jürgen Habermas's critical theory and H.L.A. Hart's analytic jurisprudence. This leads the author to conclude that the key to a fruitful dialogue and comprehensive understanding is to appreciate that the concept of law is not state-cantered and must reflect relationships to other legal systems.

HLA Hart's The Concept of Law is one of the most influential works of philosophy of the twentieth century, redefining the field of legal philosophy and introducing generations of students to philosophical reflection on the nature of law. Since its publication in 1961 an industry of academic research and debate has grown up around the book, disputing, refining, and developing Hart's work. Under the sheer volume of competing interpretations of the book the original contexts - cultural and intellectual - that shaped Hart's project can be obscured. In this book, renowned legal historian AWB Simpson attempts to sweep aside the volumes of academic criticism and return to 'Troy I', revealing the world of post-war Oxford that produced Hart and his famous book. Drawing on his personal experience of studying and teaching in Oxford at the time Hart developed The Concept of Law, Simpson recreates with characteristic wit the social and intellectual culture of Oxford philosophy and the law faculty in the 1950s. He traces Hart's early work and influences, within and outside Oxford, showing how Hart developed his picture of philosophy and its potential for enriching the understanding of law. He also lays bare the painful shortcomings of post-war Oxford academia, depicting a world of eccentric dons and intellectual Cyclopses - isolated and closed to broad, interdisciplinary exchange - arguing that Hart did not escape from the limitations of his intellectual world. Simpson's entertaining, and controversial, account of the world that produced The Concept of Law will be essential reading for all those engaged in interpreting and teaching the seminal book, and an engaging read for anyone interested in the history of Oxford philosophy and legal education.

Fifty years on from its first publication, The Concept of Law is still the starting point for the study of legal philosophy and is widely heralded as a classic work of modern philosophy. This third edition features a new introduction by Leslie Green, looking at Hart's work from the perspective of modern jurisprudence.

During the last decades, legal theory has focused almost completely on norms, rules and arguments as the constitutive elements of law. Concepts were mostly neglected. The contributions to this volume try to remedy this neglect by elucidating the role concepts play in law from different perspectives. A main aim of this volume is to initiate a debate about concepts in law. Åke Frändberg gives an overview of the many different uses of concepts in law and shows amongst others that concepts in the law should not be confused with the role of concepts in descriptions of the law. Dietmar von der Pfordten criticizes the restriction to norms as parts of the law in contemporary legal theory by questioning what concepts are and what their function is, both in general and in legal conceptual schemes. Giovanni Sartor assumes the inferential analysis of meaning proposed by Alf Ross in his ground breaking paper Tû-tû and addresses the question how possession of a concept, including the rules defining it, is possible without endorsing these rules. Jaap Hage argues that 1. legal status words such as 'owner' have a meaning because they denote things or relations in institutional reality, 2. the meaning of these words consists in this denotation relation, 3. knowledge of this meaning presupposes knowledge of the rules governing these words. Torben Spaak contributes to this volume with an exemplary analysis of one of the most central concepts of the law, namely that of a legal power. Lorenz Kähler discusses the role of concepts in determining the scope of application of legal rules and raises from this perspective the question to what extent legal concept formation can be arbitrary. Ralf Poscher argues that as soon as a concept is used in stating the law, the precise scope of application of this concept has become a legal matter. This means that the use of ‘moral’ concepts in the law does not automatically lead to a moral import into the law. Dennis Patterson holds that Hart’s concept of law can be understood as a so-called ‘practice theory’ and provides an overview of such a theory.