Legality as Such: Further Thoughts on David Dyzenhaus, The Long Arc of Legality

Abstract

The subtitle of David Dyzenhaus’s book, The Long Arc of Legality is:  Hobbes, Kelsen, Hart.  And Dyzenhaus’s ultimate objective in the book is seemingly a natural law or anti-positivist position.  In particular, the text puts forward a distinctive view of the moral content of law and “legality”.   Attempting to get to that destination via three figures (Hobbes, Kelsen, and Hart) associated with both amoral and legal positivist positions seems like a strange strategy, or perhaps just a difficult self-imposed challenge, and thus an opportunity to show mastery.  Despite, or perhaps because of, that difficulty, the book is a very impressive achievement, raising fundamental questions about the way we think about adjudication in particular and law in general.