O debate entre Hart e Fuller: uma controvérsia envolvendo veículos no parque

Abstract

A debate occurred in 1958 at the Harvard Law Review has become a landmark for contemporary philosophy of law. Still under the philosophical and moral impact of the Second World War, Herbert L. A. Hart published his version of legal positivism whitin the article entitled Positivism and the Separation of Law and Moral. The answer came from Lon Fuller’s Positivism and Fidelity to Law – A Reply to Prof. Hart. Much of the debate took place over a seemingly prosaic exemple: a rule prohibiting vehicles from a park. With this exemple, Hart argued that rules have a core of clear aplications, but this core meaning would be sorrounded by a penumbra of uncertainty. Fuller uses a counter-exemple to instist that legal language, by itself, cannot determine a certain outcome: it is necessary to understand the purpose for wich the rule was suppose to serve. This paper analyses this controversy from its most important features: i) the connection between legal philosophy and philosophy of language; ii) the possibility of legal interpretation; iii) and the different possibles points of view for the analysis of law. This paper argues that the study of these features sheds light on the problems we encounter in contemporary philosophy of law, especialy with regard to theories of legal argumentation and its relation with legal langague and legal interpretation.