ABSTRACT
This chapter briefly explores some obvious grounds for unease about, disagreement with or hostility towards the kind of approach which Law, Morality and Society represents. It argues that the predominance of analytical jurisprudence within legal theory and the domination of the expository orthodoxy within academic law are more plausibly interpreted as an example of symbiosis rather than of simple cause and effect. Herbert Hart's work provides the foundations of contemporary legal philosophy in the English-speaking world and beyond. His teaching in Oxford and elsewhere has inspired many a young philosopher to turn to jurisprudence in the reasonable expectation of a good harvest. Jurisprudence is the theoretical aspect of law-as-a-discipline; the nature and scope of academic law is itself a central question of jurisprudence and a controversial one at that. Oxonian legal philosophy, as represented by the work of Hart and nearly all of the contributors to Law, Morality and Society, falls clearly within the mainstream of contemporary British analytical philosophy.
