Categories: Legal Theory and Jurisprudence

Instructor(s)

Thompson, Cliff

Course Data

Room 2211
TR 3:30pm-4:50pm

Pass/Fail: Yes

Course Description

This course will focus on the jurisprudence of Cardozo, Hart, and Fuller.
-Benjamin Cardozo (born 1870; New York Court of Appeals (1914-1932); US Supreme Court (1932-1938) was a distinguished jurist noted, wrote Stephen Gottlieb, "for his attention to justice, his emphasis on the purpose of law, and for his majestic description of the relationship between policy and precedent in his books and opinions."
-H.L.A. Hart (1907-1992), professor of jurisprudence at Oxford University , revolutionized legal philosophy in his day and, among others, influenced John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin.
-Lon Fuller (1902-1978) whose famous debate with Hart encapsulated the tension between natural law tendencies (Fuller) and positivism (Hart).

The course will use three books with respect to these men:
1. Benjamin N. Cardozo, The Nature of the Judicial Process (the 1921 classic published by Yale);
2. Nicola Lacey, The Life of H.L.A. Hart (The Nightmare and the Noble Dream) (Oxford, 2004) (Reviewers praised Lacey's book both as a biography and for her description of Hart's The Concept of Law.)
3. Lon L. Fuller, The Morality of Law (Revised edition 1969) the intellectual rival of Hart's theory.

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