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Toh on Hart's Expressivism

By Lawrence Solum

Kevin Toh (University of Texas Law School) has posted Hart's Expressivism and His Benthamite Project on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

The paper argues that H.L.A. Hart conceived internal legal statements as normative statements, and more particularly that he developed an expressivist analysis of internal legal statements that bears strong influences of his predecessors and contemporaries who advocated expressivist analyses of ethical statements. It also takes up Ronald Dworkin?s influential criticism of Hart?s legal theory, according to which Hart cannot account for some genuine legal disagreements. Dworkin?s criticism is founded on a mischaracterization of Hart?s analysis as a descriptivist analysis of the sort that both G.E. Moore and the early emotivists criticized. In his expressivist analysis Hart had an account of internal legal statements that was designed to explain normative disagreements.

An important paper. If you want to know what Hart was up to, you need to read this paper. Highly recommended. Download it while its hot!

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on August 04, 2010 (boomark / email).