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You're listening to Parts of the Examined Life episode 303 Part 3.

You've been discussing H. L. A. Hart's book, The Concept of Law from 1961.

We were up to Chapter 6 foundations of a legal system.

Were there any points left over from last time that since it's been a few days since we

recorded that, Parts 1 and 2 that you wanted to bring up?

So where we left off, we left off at the end of Chapter 5, the Elements of Law, Section

3, where we describe some defects of the way pre-legal rules work in primitive societies

and those were uncertainty.

The doubts about the scope of the rule procedures for resolving them, the statickness of rules,

how do you change them, inefficiency, how do you enforce, doesn't happen quickly, it can

lead to vendettos and so we get these remedies.

One of which is the rule of recognition, which basically gives your procedure for determining

what is and isn't a law.

So it's a part of the way you start to codify this.

And then so now he is going to go into the way this rule of recognition is related to

the concept of legal validity in this Section 1.

He talks again about Austin and the idea of the legal system is founded on the majority

of a social group habitually abaying orders backed by threats from a sovereign that is not

itself obedient to anyone.

And he wants to say really the rule of recognition is actually the foundational thing for legal

...