Positivism and the separation of law and morals
Harvard Law Review, vol. 71, no. 4, 1958, pp. 593
Abstract
Professor Hart defends the Positivist school of jurisprudence from many of the criticisms which have been leveled against its insistence on distinguishing the law that is from the law that ought to be. He first insists that the critics have confused this distinction with other Positivist theories about law which deserved criticism, and then proceeds to consider the merits of the distinction.
Quotes from this work
Surely if we have learned anything from the history of morals it is that the thing to do with a moral quandary is not to hide it. Like nettles, the occasions when life forces us to choose between the lesser of two evils must be grasped with the consciousness that they are what they are. The vice of this use of the principle that, at certain limiting points, what is utterly immoral cannot be law or lawful is that it will serve to cloak the true nature of the problems with which we are faced and will encourage the romantic optimism that all the values we cherish ultimately will fit into a single system, that no one of them has to be sacrificed or compromised to accommodate another.