AN EVALUATION OF THE LEGAL PHILOSOPHIES OF LON FULLER AND JEROME HALL AS RESPONSES TO LEGAL POSITIVISM

Legal Positivism, with its conception of "law" as a set of rules produced by a particular procedure or by particular individuals, has dominated jurisprudence for the past century. In the mid-Twentieth Century, two American legal philosophers, Lon Fuller and Jerome Hall, rejected the Legal Positivist conception of law and proposed conceptions of law as human conduct. Both embraced, to one degree or another, what they considered to be the main current of Natural Law. This study is an inquiry into the nature of their alternative legal philosophies and into whether they are adequate responses to Legal Positivism.;Jerome Hall also asserts that ethical purpose or "value" is inherent in law. He too, however, fails to offer a valid ethical theory. His early affirmation of ethical intuitionism appears to give way to an ethical and cultural relativism. His main emphasis is on jurisprudence as a social science.;Both philosophers fail to place their conceptions of "law" within an ontological framework. Both remain firmly within a conception of "reality" as empirical or researchable existence. Both conceive of "reason" as either common sense or the capacity to perform the kind of research demanded by modern science.;Finally, we offer an alternative approach to legal philosophy. We affirm the existence of human wisdom, wisdom that is most relevant to political and social affairs, and we argue that any adequate jurisprudence must recognize this real facet of human life. This leads us also to refer to the classical philosophers--Plato, Aristotle, and St. Augustine. They place law within not only a social framework, but also a cosmic or ontological framework. We conclude that the failure of both Fuller and Hall to recognize the reality of wisdom and its relevance to legal philosophy dooms their philosophies to inadequacy.;Concerning Lon Fuller, we conclude that his conception of law as a legal system with its own internal morality does not serve to distinguish his jurisprudence from Legal Positivism. Further, his reference to ethical theory as a part of positive law demonstrates only that law, as purposive human conduct, contains a purpose or "ought" that is often, identified with ethical ends. Fuller's own ethical theory fails to offer an adequate ontological foundation for his assertion that ethical truth can be known.