Lon Fuller

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Lon Luvois Fuller (born July 15, 1902 in Hereford , Texas , † April 8, 1978 ) was an American legal philosopher .

His main work on legal philosophy is The Morality of Law (1st edition 1964, 2nd revised edition 1969), in which he - critically reflecting on the theses of HLA Hart's legal philosophy - discusses the relationship between law and morality . Lon Fuller was a professor of law at Harvard University . A debate between him and HLA Hart, published in the magazine Harvard Law Review in 1958, became very famous ; it already contains the key messages of the modern dispute between legal positivism (represented in the debate by HLA Hart) and natural law theory (represented by Lon Fuller) . The American legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin is considered to be the most famous student of Fuller's time as a lecturer at Harvard University. Dworkin's own legal philosophy was significantly influenced by Fuller. In addition to his occupation with legal philosophical issues, Lon Fuller also worked as a contract lawyer .

Life

Fuller was the son of a bank clerk. In 1906 his family moved from Texas to California . Fuller studied from 1919 law and economics in Berkeley (until 1920) and Stanford (1920-1926), which he graduated in 1926 with a doctorate in law. He began his academic teaching career in 1926 at the Oregon School of Law . He then held professorships at the University of Illinois and from 1931 to 1939 at Duke Law School . At Duke Law School one of his students was the future US President Richard Nixon . After working there as a visiting professor in 1939/1940, Fuller was offered a professorship at Harvard University in 1940, where he taught until his death in 1978.

In 1940 Fuller was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

plant

The core of Lon Fuller's work on legal philosophy is his criticism of the variant of legal positivism represented by HLA Hart . In contrast to Hart, Fuller advocates the thesis of a necessary conceptual connection between law and morality. As part of a fictional story about a so-called King Rex , Fuller's work The Morality of Law lists eight of his views that are fundamental to all legal systems. King Rex tries to legislate, but always fails in his task of enacting binding and substantial legal norms when he enacts "laws" that suffer from one of the following eight problems:

  1. A general lack of laws, which leads to inconsistent ad-hoc case law ( the lack of rules of law, which leads to ad-hoc and inconsistent adjudication ).
  2. Unpublished laws that nobody knows about ( failure to publicize or make known the rules of law ).
  3. The retroactive legislation is abused ( retroactive legislative ).
  4. Unclear or obscure legislation that is impossible to understand .
  5. Contradictions in the law .
  6. Laws that place unachievably high demands on citizens or the administration ( demands that are beyond the power of the subjects and the ruled ).
  7. Constantly changing legislation with some laws that change daily ( unstable legislation ).
  8. Deviations of the judiciary and administration from the legislative enacted laws ( divergence between adjudication / administration and legislation ).

Fuller draws the following conclusions from the tragic efforts of King Rex : It is the purpose of law to align human behavior with the rule of certain rules ("rules"). Each of the eight fundamental problems listed corresponds to a corresponding legislative principle that serves to avoid those fundamental problems. If even one of these principles were permanently violated by the legislature, the legal system in question would lose its status as a legal system. The more a legal system is based on the eight principles, the more it corresponds to the ideal of a legal system. Fuller admits, however, that in practice no actual legal system corresponds to the ideal, rather that every legal system compromises at some point with regard to one or more of the principles mentioned. According to Fuller, these principles form what he called the “inner morality of law”. If laws were strictly aligned with the principles, this would automatically lead to the laws passed being just laws.

HLA Hart criticized in his review of the work The Morality of Law the designation of the eight principles chosen by Fuller as the "inner morality of law". The principles are unsuitable to guarantee the morality of law aimed at by Fuller, since they are not moral principles, but only principles aimed at effective legislation. More positively, it is noted that Fuller would have brought to mind a legal ethical justification of traditional elements of the rule of law: the preservation of human autonomy. Why this is a legal value and whether there are substantive standards for its use remains unanswered by Fuller.

Fonts (selection)

Essays
  • Positivism and Fidelity to the Law. A Reply to Professor Hart . In: Harvard Law Review , 71, 630-672 (1958), ISSN  0017-811X .
  • The forms and limits of adjudication . In: Michael Freeman (ed.): Alternative dispute resolution . University Press, New York 1995, pp. 3-60, ISBN 0-8147-2636-4 .
  • Mediation. Its forms and functions . In: Michael Freeman (ed.): Alternative dispute resolution . University Press, New York 1995, pp. 115-150, ISBN 0-8147-2636-4 .
Monographs
  • The Morality of Law . New edition Yale University Press, New Haven 1978, ISBN 0-300-00472-9 (EA 1963).
  • Kenneth Winston (Ed.): The principles of social order. Selected essays of Lon L. Fuller . Hart, Oxford 2001, ISBN 1-8411-3234-9 .

literature

  • Achim Doerfer: The moral of the law. On the legal philosophy of Lon L. Fullers (studies on legal philosophy and legal theory; Vol. 41). Nomos, Baden-Baden 2006, ISBN 3-8329-1802-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nicola Lacey: Out of the Witches' Cauldron? Reinterpreting the Context and Re-Assessing the Significance of the Hart-Fuller Debate . In: Peter Cane (Ed.): The Hart-Fuller debate: 50 years on . Hart, Oxford 2010, doi : 10.2139 / ssrn.2126511 (English, here: Preprint, Oxford Legal Studies Research Paper No. 51).
  2. ↑ All biographical information comes from: Achim Doerfer, Die Moral des Rechts. On the legal philosophy Lon L. Fullers , Baden-Baden 2006
  3. ^ Members of the American Academy. Listed by election year, 1900-1949 ( PDF ). Retrieved September 24, 2015
  4. ↑ Lon L. Fuller, The Morality of Law , 2nd ed., New Haven and London 1969, pp. 33-38
  5. ^ According to Matthias Mahlmann: Philosophy of Law and Theory of Law. 2nd Edition. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2012, ISBN 978-3-8329-7381-0 , § 13 marginal no. 31 (listed here as point 3)
  6. ↑ Lon L. Fuller, The Morality of Law , 2nd ed., New Haven and London 1969, p. 41
  7. ↑ HLA Hart, Review of The Morality of Law , in: Harvard Law Review 78 (1965), pp. 1281-1296
  8. ^ So Matthias Mahlmann: Legal Philosophy and Legal Theory. 2nd Edition. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2012, ISBN 978-3-8329-7381-0 , § 13 marginal no. 33
personal data
SURNAME Fuller, Lon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fuller, Lon Luvois
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American legal philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH July 15, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Hereford , Texas
DATE OF DEATH April 8, 1978