Forms Liberate: Reclaiming the Jurisprudence of Lon L Fuller
Kristen Rundle - Hart Publishing Limited, 2012
Lon L. Fuller's account of legality is
widely accepted as the classic 20th-century statement of the principles of the
rule of law. What is much less accepted is his argument that a necessary
connection between law and morality manifests in these principles. As a result,
Fuller's jurisprudence continues to occupy a marginal place in a field dominated
by H.L.A. Hart's legal positivism and Ronald Dworkin's interpretive theory of
adjudication. Forms Liberate offers a close textual analysis of Fuller's
published writings and working papers to dispute this prevailing assessment of
his contribution. Fuller's claims about law and morality belong to a wider
exploration of the ways in which the form of law introduces meaningful limits to
lawgiving power through its connection to human agency. By reading Fuller on his
own terms, Forms Liberate demonstrates why his challenge to a purely
instrumental conception of law remains salient for 21st-century legal
scholarship.
