A Few Words on Authority

Abstract

In his book, The Concept of Law, HLA Hart described the element of authority involved in law as an obstacle in the path of any easy explanation of what law is. In this paper I argue that this is true for legal positivists and that they have not been able to remove that obstacle despite vigorous attempts.

Keywords

• Authority
• Barden
• Dworkin
• jurisprudence
• Hart
• Himma
• legal theory
• legitimacy
• Murphy
• Raz
• Shapiro