{"title":"THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THE SEPARABILITY THESIS","authors":"Matthew H. Kramer","doi":"10.1017/s0008197324000254","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"One commendable aspect of the ruminations by H.L.A Hart on legal positivism, which quite a few contemporary philosophers of law have not fully absorbed, is that he recognised the diversity of the points of contention that have pitted the devotees of positivism against the devotees of natural-law theories. Whereas some present-day philosophers of law are inclined to refer to “the separability thesis” of legal positivism – with the definite article “the” as a signal that there is one defining point of dispute between legal positivists and their opponents – Hart knew that there is no single such thesis. Natural-law theorists have in fact postulated numerous connections between law and morality which putatively clinch the character of law as an inherently moral phenomenon, and legal positivists have posed challenges to each of those connections or to the claim that any unchallenged connection serves to establish the inherently moral character of law.","PeriodicalId":501295,"journal":{"name":"The Cambridge Law Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"The Cambridge Law Journal","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0008197324000254","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
One commendable aspect of the ruminations by H.L.A Hart on legal positivism, which quite a few contemporary philosophers of law have not fully absorbed, is that he recognised the diversity of the points of contention that have pitted the devotees of positivism against the devotees of natural-law theories. Whereas some present-day philosophers of law are inclined to refer to “the separability thesis” of legal positivism – with the definite article “the” as a signal that there is one defining point of dispute between legal positivists and their opponents – Hart knew that there is no single such thesis. Natural-law theorists have in fact postulated numerous connections between law and morality which putatively clinch the character of law as an inherently moral phenomenon, and legal positivists have posed challenges to each of those connections or to the claim that any unchallenged connection serves to establish the inherently moral character of law.
H.L.A. 哈特对法律实证主义的反思有一个值得称道的地方,那就是他承认实证主义信徒与自然法理论信徒之间的争论点是多种多样的。当今的一些法哲学家倾向于提及法律实证主义的 "可分性论题"--用定冠词 "the "表示法律实证主义者和他们的反对者之间有一个决定性的争论点--而哈特知道并不存在这样一个单一的论题。事实上,自然法理论家提出了法律与道德之间的许多联系,这些联系声称法律具有固有道德现象的特征,而法律实证主义者则对这些联系中的每一种提出了质疑,或者对任何未经质疑的联系都有助于确立法律的固有道德特征的说法提出了质疑。