The Question To Be Faced Is One of Fact: H.L.A. Hart’s Legal Theory Through His View of International Law

H.L.A. Hart says that The Concept of Law is focused on municipal or domestic law because that is the “central case”1 for the usage of the word ‘law.’ At the beginning of the book he states that “at various points in this book the reader will find discussions of the borderline cases where legal theorists have felt doubts about the application of the expression ‘law’ or ‘legal system,’ but the suggested resolution of these doubts, which he will also find here, is only a secondary concern of the book.”2 Yet among those borderline cases there is one that is rather intriguing, since Hart closely discusses a particular instance of them: it is international law, to which he devotes an entire chapter—the final one—of The Concept of Law. My goal in this article is therefore to make clear why the ‘resolution’ of the borderline case of international law is not entirely ‘secondary’ to Hart’s overall project in The Concept of Law and, in so doing, to show that Chapter X is not as unhappy as many think it is.