Validity, Rule of Recognition and Stability: Revisiting Analytical Concepts from the Law‐Morals Connection

In 1987, R.N. Moles claimed that Hart had developed “an account of law which is extremely superficial,” “retrograde” and “misconceived” (Moles 1987, 8, 114). Radical as it may appear, the quotation is to some extent representative of a critical approach that started in the late eighties and consolidated in the nineties, mainly due to the prevalence of much more sophisticated models for the study of Law such as those put forward by Dworkin and Alexy. However, Hartian categories have somehow retained their vigour within Legal Theory, and significant attempts to explore their potential have been made in the last twenty years. In this paper, I shall try to show the conditions under which these categories may still have some utility, with reference to the work of the Argentine philosopher Ernesto Garzón Valdés. Primarily known for his normative ethics studies and socio-political research relating to Latin-American issues, Garzón also investigates Legal Theory problems with a distinctive analytical methodology. The impact of Herbert Hart on the orientation and resolution of this sort of analytical legal questions is remarkable. In fact, one of the earliest studies in Spanish on Hart’s work was a paper by Garzón Valdés on “Legal validity, efficacy and existence in H.L.A. Hart” (Garzón Valdés 1967). Garzón had had the chance to study Hart’s The Concept of Law and to discuss it with his friend and colleague Eugenio Bulygin, an internationally recognised scholar specialising in normative logics and legal systems. However, Garzón’s primary influence was not Hartian, but rather Kelsenian. His PhD dissertation was a powerful and extensi ve critique of the Natur der Sache (“The Nature of Things”) revival that took place in bs_bs_banner