Paper Summary:

This paper presents and in-depth analysis of the differing views of two legal theorists, H. L. A. Hart and Gerald Dworkin. Although their views have often been referred to as a debate, the paper highlights their differing ideas on which legal issues are most pressing and relevant. Their outlooks are examined from a philosophical perspective and references are made to how each addressed the other's viewpoint in their writings. The paper also defines various concepts in legal theory, such as legal positivism.

From the Paper:

"The "debate" between Dworkin and Hart, may be best understood as not having been a debate at all, as the term is normally used. The differences between the two theorists are not so much contrary views on particular issues, but both more and less than that: differing ideas about which questions and which concerns in legal theory are most pressing (Tushnet, 1983). This is not to say that there are not some overlapping issues about which one could accurately state that the theorists have contrary positions, only that to focus on these direct disagreements would tend to underestimate the extent to which the theorists are actually talking past one another."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Austin, John, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (H. L. A. Hart ed., London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1955).
• Austin, Regina, "Sapphire Bound! (Minority Feminist Scholarship)" (1989) Wisconsin Law Review 539.
• Baird, Douglas; Gertner, Robert and Picker, Randal, Game Theory and the Law (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994).
• Baker, Gordon, "Defeasibility and Meaning" in Law, Morality, and Society (P. M. S. Hacker and J. Raz eds., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), pp. 26-57.
• Balkin, Jack, "Transcendental Deconstruction, Transcendent Justice" (1994) 92 Michigan Law Review 1131.

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