TY - JOUR
AU - Orrego, Cristóbal
AB - H. L. A. HART'S ARGUMENTS AGAINST CLASSICAL NATURAL LAW THEORY* CRIST6BAL ORREGO In a historical milieu that seemed to be against legal positivism (mostly due to the reductio ad Hitlerum argument of the post World War II era), H. L. A. Hart formulated again the positivist tradition, acknowledging a core of good sense in natural law theory (the "minimum content of natural law"), and completing his task with an extremely simple and influential critique of classical natural law theory. After a very short (and politically convenient) interregnum of natural law theory, Hart successfully reinstated the (transformed) tradition of legal positivism in what might be considered a masterpiece in legal scholarship. In so doing, however, he had to transform that tradition to the point of installing within it the main tenets of classical natural law theory. This I shall try to establish through the discussion of his argu-ments against the classical tradition of natural law. Hart formulates the classical theory of natural law, referring to its chief exponent, as follows: The Thomist tradition of Natural Law ... comprises a twofold contention: first, that there are certain principles of true morality or justice, discoverable by human reason without the aid of 
TI - H. L. A. Hart's Arguments Against Classical Natural Law Theory*
JF - American Journal of Jurisprudence
DO - 10.1093/ajj/48.1.297
DA - 2003-01-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/h-l-a-hart-s-arguments-against-classical-natural-law-theory-lwLs0GPNew
SP - 297
EP - 323
VL - 48
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -