On Hart's "Legal Rules"

As the founder of New Analytical Positive Jurisprudence in the twentieth century, Herbert hart's achievement has very important meaning in the history of the western area of law. Hart inherited and developed the analytical method of daily language of Wittgenstein, and drew this method into the legal field. It provided the basic thinking for the study of Descriptive Jurisprudence. After World War II, the traditional Positive Jurisprudence which represented by the imperative theory of John Austin was questioned. Hart insisted the position of positivism. He criticized the imperative theory of Austin by the analytical method of daily language. His theory included the combination of primary rule and secondary rule, rule's internal point and external point of view, the rule of recognition, open texture of rule, and so on. He built a vast system of rule, in order to replace Legal Command Theory on the basis of traditional legal positivism. This article starts from the social background of Hart's rule of law. Through analyzing its theory's origin and basis of methodology, we can comb and analyze its basic content, and find its theoretical contribution to the development of jurisprudence and the significance of the construction of the country under the rule of law better.