The late Mr Justice Holmes once divided good lawyers into ‘razors’ and ‘good kitchen knives’… Under that classification Herbert Hart is a slender bread-knife, and any work he produces will resemble the solid pedestrian tramp of Ewing or Broad and will not provide glimpses of something new and exciting…

Nicola Lacey, A life of H.L.A. Hart: the nightmare and the noble dream, Oxford, 2004