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'Forms Liberate': Reclaiming the Legal Philosophy of Lon L. Fuller

This thesis offers a reading of the legal philosophy of the mid-twentieth century legal scholar, Lon L. Fuller. By illuminating how Fuller’s vision of law gravitates constantly to the relationship between the form of law and the status of the legal subject as an agent, this reading provides a basis for revisiting the issues in dispute in his famous exchanges with the legal positivist philosopher, H.L.A. Hart.

The thesis as a whole seeks to meet two main objectives. First, I seek to demonstrate how Fuller’s persistent concern for the way that the form of law instantiates respect for the legal subject lends his legal philosophy a coherence that has been insufficiently appreciated to this point. Second, I seek to elaborate the claim that once we appreciate the centrality of the relationship between legal form and agency to Fuller’s thought, we come to understand why he insisted that law can and should be distinguished from other modes of ordering, and why it must also be regarded as distinctively moral.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/19224
Date02 March 2010
CreatorsRundle, Kristen Ann
ContributorsDyzenhaus, David
Source SetsUniversity of Toronto
Languageen_ca
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis

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