PHL271H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Social Fact
Document Summary
In giving his critique, honore shows that a weaker version of legal positivism is still valid. We can hold this weak version and still think there is a necessary connection between law and morality. Honore is not a legal positivist, but he does think that some of the claims that positivists make are endorsable, and you don"t need to adopt their entire theory to endorse these. While there is a necessary connection between the two, there is a difference between law and morality. Thesis of how law is to be identi ed: positivism says that law is to be identi ed as a matter of social fact. This means that each country will come up with a set of criteria for some things being a law, and that we can identify what counts as a legal system simply by looking at these criteria. This relates to hart"s idea of secondary rules.
