Hart, Dworkin, Judges, and New Law

Ronald Dworkin, beginning in about 1967, has written a series of articles attacking the dominant contemporary theory of law, the legal positivism of H. L. A. Hart. Dworkin’s articles, while largely critical, go far towards establishing his own theory of the law, a theory that while never explicitly and succinctly formulated can nonetheless be reconstructed from his critical remarks. The theory is a combination of positivism and natural law theory, and indeed has been named by one of its critics, “The Third Theory of Law.”