The Hart-Fuller Debate in the Twenty-First Century

This book presents and comments on the papers delivered at a colloquium held at the Australian National University in December 2008, celebrating 50 years since the publication in the Harvard Law Review of the famous and wide-ranging debate between the legal philosophers H.L.A. Hart and Lon L. Fuller. The essays - written by experts in legal philosophy - do not re-run the Hart-Fuller debate, nor are they confined to discussion of the jurisprudential issues canvassed by Hart and Fuller. Rather, in using the debate as a point of departure and inspiration, they pick up on strands in the debate and re-evaluate them in the light of the social, political, and intellectual developments of the past 50 years, when the ways of understanding law and other normative systems have changed. The Hart-Fuller Debate: 50 Years On will be of international interest to legal philosophers, as well as those interested in morality and the law.