Showing papers by "Neil MacCormick published in 1994"

The Concept of Law and ‘The Concept of Law’

Abstract: This lecture commemorates a great jurist and philosopher. Since Herbert Hart's recent sad death, many have paid just and eloquent tribute to his qualities as scholar, as teacher, and as human being. His work, and his approach to work and to life, were a source of guidance and inspiration to many. My own intellectual debt to him is a great one, and I owe much to his personal kindness and professional support as well. I am too much honoured in being invited to give this year's Hart lecture. Against original hope and design, this has turned into a lecture in memoriam Herbert Hart; as such, it can at best only echo his own splendid qualities. Perhaps its title 'The Concept of Law and The Concept of Law' has, appropriately, the ring of an echo in it. The starting point for discussion has to be in one of the focal ideas of Hart's legal positivism, that of the conceptual distinction between law and morality. Three salient points of distinction are, for me, that law is institutional, authoritative, and heteronomous, contrasting with the personal and controversial, the discursive, and the autonomous character essential to morality. Having established these contrasts in the first section, I proceed in sections two, three and four to discuss respectively the institutional, the authoritative, and the heteronomous character of law. Finally, bearing in mind that law and morality are both normative, both action-guiding for rational agents, I mitigate the sharpness of the earlier-drawn contrast in a consideration of practical reason, law, and morality in relation to law.

Legal Reasoning and the institutional Theory of Law

Abstract: L'A. montre l'interet de la theorie institutionnelle du droit de Ota Weinberger pour comprendre le systeme du raisonnement juridique. Il explique comment ce raisonnement trouve sa solution dans une logique deontique des predicats