Abstract
An account of law should explain the character of legal obligation. And one of the main problems of the philosophy of law according to Hart is the similarities and differences between legal obligation and coercion. Before distinguishing legal obligation from coercion (and later moral obligation) Hart sets himself “to understand the general idea of obligation as a necessary preliminary to understanding it in its legal form” (CL, 83). Central to this task is an understanding of two points of view one may take toward rules. Once the nature of obligation is understood, one can proceed to examine how the addition of some power-conferring rules to duty-imposing ones provides a basis for a legal system.
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© 1992 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Bayles, M.D. (1992). Elements of Law. In: Hart’s Legal Philosophy. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 17. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8086-1_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8086-1_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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