Lon Luvois Fuller lived from 1902 to 1978 and was an American legal philosopher best known as a proponent of a secular and procedural form of natural law theory. A professor of law at Harvard Law School for many years, he is noted in American law for his contributions to jurisprudence and the law of contracts. His 1958 debate with the British legal philosopher H. L. A. Hart in the Harvard Law Review, known as the Hart-Fuller debate, was important in framing the modern conflict between legal positivism and natural law theory, and in his widely discussed 1964 book The Morality of Law he argued that all systems of law contain an internal morality imposing on individuals a presumptive obligation of obedience. The legal scholar Robert S. Summers said in 1984 that Fuller was one of the four most important American legal theorists of the preceding hundred years.
Facts
Nationality / Jurisdiction Place of DeathCambridge, Massachusetts 1 Classification
Field of LawLegal Philosophy and Jurisprudence 1 Role
Role (category) Connections
In Legal System
Source Lon L. Fuller (Wikipedia)
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1. Lon L. Fuller (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributorsLead sentence, parenthetical
(June 15, 1902, April 8, 1978)
Life section, opening sentence
Fuller was born in Hereford, Texas and grew up in the Imperial Valley in Southern California.
Life section, closing sentence
Fuller died at age 75 at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Lead sentence
was an American legal philosopher best known as a proponent of a secular and procedural form of natural law theory.
In Legal System: Law of the United States, Wikipedia lead sentence
was an American legal philosopher best known as a propo
View the Source Frequently Asked Questions
What are the eight conditions Lon Fuller said a rule must meet to count as law?
Generality, publicity, prospectivity, clarity, consistency, constancy, possibility of compliance, and congruence in administration.
In The Morality of Law (1964), Fuller argued that all systems of law contain an internal morality. According to him, all purported legal rules must meet eight minimal conditions, which he calls principles of legality. The rules must be sufficiently general, publicly promulgated, prospective (applicable only to future behavior, not past), at least minimally clear and intelligible, free of contradictions, relatively constant so that they do not change continuously from day to day, possible to obey, and administered in a way that does not wildly diverge from their obvious or apparent meaning.
What was the Hart-Fuller debate?
A 1958 Harvard Law Review exchange with H. L. A. Hart that framed the conflict between legal positivism and natural law theory.
Fuller's 1958 debate with the British legal philosopher H. L. A. Hart in the Harvard Law Review, known as the Hart-Fuller debate, was important in framing the modern conflict between legal positivism and natural law theory. Fuller was a proponent of a secular and procedural form of natural law theory. He denied the core claim of legal positivism that there is no necessary connection between law and morality.
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