Abstract

This thesis is an investigation of Herbert Hart's views on law's normativity. I attempt to provide a Hartian answer to the question 'what does it means to say that citizens accept law and legal obligations?' I echo and reinforce Hart's positivist view that moral reasons and moral arguments can, but need not play any role in the practical reasoning of citizens who by their conduct and characteristic use of normative language show that they accept law. I echo Hart's claims to the extent that I try to amplify and clarify the merits he claims for his philosophy of law in his The Concept of Law, Essays On Bentham and in the Postscript to the second edition of The Concept of Law. I amplify those claims in an original way by extending Hart's argument contra Raz in Essays On Bentham that officials need not believe or pretend to believe that the legal norms they apply to citizens have moral merit. I argue that officials may be committed to non-moral, yet value-relevant and normative aesthetic ideals which provide them with reasons to accept even clearly morally iniquitous legal norms. This argument further supports Hart's claim that legal and moral obligation are not simply two different species of the same genus, and provides a rebuttal to the alternative views urged by Raz and others