In 1988 H.L.A.
Hart gave a wide-ranging interview to Professor David Sugarman. The interview
encompassed Hart's childhood, philosophical influences, career inside and
beyond philosophy, his major philosophical work, his arguments with Lon Fuller,
Patrick Devlin, and Ronald Dworkin, his views on the nature of legal philosophy
and legal education, and his legacy. To celebrate the publication of the third edition of Hart's most famous work, The Concept of Law, OUP has remastered and released, by kind permission of Professor Sugarman, the full audio recording of the interview for the first time.
In the fourth
part of the interview Hart discusses his sabbatical year at Harvard University,
and experience of American teaching and academia. He touches on the writing of
Causation in the Law, and discusses at length his engagement with Lon Fuller,
including their exchange in the Harvard Law Review. Other figures discussed
include John Dickinson, Herbert Wechsler, Roscoe Pound, Henry Hart, Paul
Freund, and Peter Winch. Finally, he discusses his attitude to jurisprudence
textbooks, and establishing the Clarendon Law Series.
In the sixth part of the interview Hart discusses the work of Robert Nozick,
and Ronald Dworkin, in particular his disagreement with Dworkin on the nature of
legal philosophy. He responds to Dworkin’s ‘semantic sting’ argument, and
clarifies his position on the role of evaluation in social theory. He concludes
with his assessment of Dworkin as a ‘beautiful writer who got carried away’.
Source: Oxford University Press.
Comentarios