A Critical and Comparative Study of Hart and Fuller's Debate on the ‎Relationship Between Law and Ethics

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Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Department of Legal Philosophy, Baqir Al-Ulum University, Qom, Iran‎

2 Department of Legal Philosophy, Baqir Al-Ulum University, Qom, Iran.‎

Abstract

The Hart-Fuller debate is of great importance in contemporary legal philosophy for several reasons. It can be considered the starting point for the revival of the tradition of legal positivism, which attempts to separate moral norms from the nature of law. The debate took place over two articles and a book by Hart, and an article, a book, and a book appendix by Fuller. Although the debate between these two philosophers covers a wide range of fundamental issues in legal philosophy, and has become, according to some philosophers, the criterion for distinguishing positivist theories from natural law theories, all these disputes are in fact due to the disagreement between the two over the idea of separation of law and moral norms. In this paper, after a brief historical account of the views of natural law and legal positivism, we have attempted to reconstruct the debate between these two legal philosophers based on the aforementioned sources, in four issues: 1- the nature of law, 2- legal interpretation, 3- positivism and meta-ethics, and 4- the scope and nature of the knowledge of legal philosophy. As we shall see, in some issues Hart's arguments seem more convincing, and in others Fuller's arguments, and in some issues both arguments are convincing enough, and the dispute continues between the proponents of the two.

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References

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Comparative Law Review

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Available Online from 22 June 2025

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