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Lon Luvois Fuller

Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy

Introduction

The most renowned legal theorist in the United States in the middle decades of the twentieth century, Lon Fuller taught contract law and jurisprudence at the Harvard Law School from 1939 until his retirement in 1972. He secured his place in legal philosophy in the 1930s with three articles on legal fictions and probing critiques of legal realism. His work on the reliance interest, the doctrine of consideration, and other aspects of contract law established him as one of the most innovative and influential theorists in the field by mid-century. His hypothetical Case of the Speluncean Explorers, an elegant portrayal of rival judicial philosophies, is a classic of the legal literature. And his published exchanges with the Oxford philosopher H. L. A. Hart, in the 1950s and 1960s, set the terms of debate in jurisprudence for several generations of students.

In this brief entry, I will focus on four connected issues in jurisprudence that preoccupied Fuller for much of his...

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References

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  • van der Burg W (2014) The dynamics of law and morality: a pluralist account of legal interactionism. Ashgate, Farnham

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  • Fuller LL (1958) Positivism and fidelity to law – a reply to professor Hart. Harv Law Rev 71:630–672

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  • Fuller LL (1966) The law in quest of itself. Beacon Press, Boston. (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1940)

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  • Fuller LL (1969) The morality of law, rev edn. Yale University Press, New Haven

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  • Winston K (forthcoming) The ideal element in law revisited. In: Modern German non-positivism: from Radbruch to Alexy. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen

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  • Witteveen WJ, van der Burg W (eds) (1999) Rediscovering Fuller: essays on implicit law and institutional design. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Kenneth Winston

Authors
  1. Kenneth Winston
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Correspondence to Kenneth Winston .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for International & Comparative Law, University of Baltimore School of Law, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

    Mortimer Sellers

  2. Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften, University of Salzburg, Austria, Salzburg, Austria

    Stephan Kirste

Section Editor information

  1. Philosophy Department, Villanova University, Villanova, PA, USA

    Sally Scholz Ph.D

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Winston, K. (2017). Lon Luvois Fuller. In: Sellers, M., Kirste, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_201-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_201-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-94-007-6730-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-007-6730-0

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Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Fuller, Lon Luvois
    Published:
    15 December 2022

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_201-3

  2. Fuller, Lon Luvois
    Published:
    07 May 2018

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_201-2

  3. Original

    Lon Luvois Fuller
    Published:
    06 June 2017

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_201-1

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