Download This PaperLaw is the Command of the Sovereign: H.L.A. Hart Reconsidered
Ratio Juris. Vol. 29 No. 3 September 2016 (364-384)
21 Pages Posted: 5 Aug 2014 Last revised: 10 Aug 2018
Date Written: August 4, 2014
Abstract
This article presents a critical reevaluation of the thesis – closely associated with H.L.A. Hart, and central to the views of most recent legal philosophers – that the idea of state coercion is not logically essential to the definition of law. The author argues that even laws governing contracts must ultimately be understood as “commands of the sovereign, backed by force”. This follows in part from recognition that the “sovereign”, defined rigorously, at the highest level of abstraction, is that person or entity identified by reference to game theory and the philosophical idea of “convention” as the source of signals with which the subject population has become effectively locked, as a group, into conformity.
Keywords: H.L.A. Hart, John Austin, Jeremy Bentham, coercive model, game theory, convention, sovereign, command model
JEL Classification: K10
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Andrew Stumpff Morrison (Contact Author)
University of Michigan Law School ( email )
625 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1215
United States