The Three Lives of Herbert Hart

Abstract

Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart (1907-1992) had a very successful public life. In the three decades that followed his election to the Chair of Jurisprudence at Oxford in 1951, he led a jurisprudential revolution in the English speaking world.1 He was 'for English speaking jurists the focal figure', 'the single most influential jurist not only in this country, but also in many other parts of the Western World', who 'raised the Lazarus of English-speaking legal and political philosophy from the pallet on which it had languished for the best part of a century'.2 On graduating from New College, Oxford in 1929 with a First in 'Greats' (classics, ancient history and philosophy) (ch two of A Life), Hart established a successful career at the Chancery Bar in the 1930s (ch three), and became a senior member of MI5's counter-espionage division in the Second World War (ch five). Following the War, he taught Philosophy at New College (ch six), before becoming Professor of Jurisprudence, and a professorial fellow of University College in 1952 (ch seven).3 He visited Harvard in 1956/7 (ch eight), served on the Monopolies and Mergers Commission from 1966 to 1972, and produced the Hart Report on Oxford University's relations with its junior members (ch eleven). After resigning from his Chair in 1968, Hart worked on the Bentham Project at University College London. He was Principal of Brasenose College from 1973 to 1978 (ch twelve). He combined this with being married to another Oxford academic, Jenifer,4 and fathering four children, Joanna (1942), Adam (1944), Charles (1948) and Jacob (1959). In A Life of H. L. A. Hart, Professor Nicola Lacey has sought to provide an intellectual biography of Hart, rather than an extended analysis of his scholarly