KEVIN TOH’S EXPRESSIVIST READING OF H. L. A. HART, OR HOW NOT TO RESPOND TO RONALD DWORKIN

Abstract This paper criticises Kevin Toh’s expressivist reconstruction of H. L. A. Hart’s semantics of legal statements on the grounds that two implications of Toh’s reading are arguably too disruptive to Hart’s theory of law. The first of these implications is that legal statements are rendered indistinguishable from statements of value. The second is that the concept of a rule of recognition (indeed, of secondary rules in general) is rendered dispensable. I argue for the unacceptability of these consequences from a Hartian standpoint in the first two sections of this paper. The last ...