Abstract
La Torre considers the unfolding of D. Neil MacCormick’s legal theory by reference to the concept of law endorsed by the Scottish philosopher. La Torre claims that the legal theory of MacCormick is the true heir to the normative project underlying Hart’s legal theory, in the precise sense that it has pushed to its logical and normative conclusion the quest for a non-decisionistic understanding of law, which stresses the key role played by social legal practices, the centrality of the standpoint internal to law as a normative order to understand legal phenomena, and consequently, calls for a theory which focuses on the addressees of the law and not exclusively on institutional actors.
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- 1.
L. Wittegenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966), p. 145.
- 2.
See H. L. A. Hart, “Definition and Theory in Jurisprudence”, now in idem, Essays in Jurisprudence and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), Chapter 1.
- 3.
H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 41.
- 4.
N. MacCormick, “Commentary”, in: Issues in Contemporary Jurisprudence. The Influence of H.L.A. Hart, R. Gavison (ed) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 105.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
R. Dworkin, “Hart and the Concepts of Law”, (2006) 119 Harvard Law Review Forum, pp. 95–104, at 102.
- 7.
See N. MacCormick, Legal Right and Social Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), Chapter 12.
- 8.
N. MacCormick, Legal Theory and Legal Reasoning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978).
- 9.
N. MacCormick, Legal Theory and Legal Reasoning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) (revised edition), p. 229.
- 10.
Foreword, in ibid., p. xiv.
- 11.
Ibid., p. ix.
- 12.
Ibid., p. xv.
- 13.
N. MacCormick, “Legal Obligation and the Imperative Fallacy”, in: A. W. B. Simpson (ed), Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence, Second Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 171–201.
- 14.
Appendix, in MacCormick, note 9 supra, p. 291.
- 15.
Ibid.
- 16.
Ibid., p. 292.
- 17.
N. MacCormick, Law as Institutional Fact (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, 1973), p. 2.
- 18.
Dworkin, note 6 supra, p. 98.
- 19.
See, for instance, N. MacCormick, Questioning Sovereignty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 7.
- 20.
See N. MacCormick, Rhetoric and the Rule of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 4.
- 21.
See N. MacCormick, Institutions of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), Chapter 1.
- 22.
See H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law, 2nd ed., with a Postscript edited by P. A. Bullock & J. Raz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 238 et seq.
- 23.
See MacCormick, note 17 supra, p. 24.
- 24.
Ibid., p. 28.
- 25.
MacCormick, note 7 supra, Chapter 8.
- 26.
Ibid.
- 27.
J. R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996), p. 36.
- 28.
MacCormick, note 19 supra, p. 7.
- 29.
Ibid., p. 3.
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La Torre, M. (2011). Reform and Tradition: Changes and Continuities in Neil MacCormick’s Concept of Law. In: Menéndez, A., Fossum, J. (eds) Law and Democracy in Neil MacCormick's Legal and Political Theory. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 93. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8942-7_4
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