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Legislating Morality: Scoring the Hart‐Devlin Debate after Fifty Years
Author(s) -
BASSHAM GREGORY
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
ratio juris
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.344
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 1467-9337
pISSN - 0952-1917
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9337.2012.00506.x
Subject(s) - morality , state (computer science) , law , political science , law and economics , philosophy , sociology , algorithm , computer science
It has now been more than 50 years since H. L. A Hart and Lord Patrick Devlin first squared off in perhaps the most celebrated jurisprudential debate of the twentieth‐century (1959–1967). The central issue in that dispute—whether the state may criminalize immoral behavior as such—continues to be debated today, but in a vastly changed legal landscape. In this article I take a fresh look at the Hart‐Devlin debate in the light of five decades of social and legal changes.