Where is the Law? A Dialogue

Abstract

This short (5-page / 1,800-word) dialogue between a law professor and a first-year law student was inspired by Henry M. Hart, Jr.’s 1963 Oliver Wendell Holmes Lectures at Harvard Law School. Like Hart’s original dialogue, its purpose is to raise questions about the nature of law and the nature of our knowledge about law. Unlike Hart’s dialogue, it focuses on the role of historical and sociological explanation in legal analysis and jurisprudential inquiry. Specifically, it asks whether, and if so how, those fields of inquiry are distinguishable from law.

Keywords: Hart, Holmes, Horwitz, Dworkin, Klarman