Professor John Gardner says on the jacket, “these essays – without exception insightful and penetrating – set a high standard for the rest of us to aspire to.” This collection of 15 essays by 16 Canadian authors originated in a conference at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. The majority of contributors are based in southern Ontario (Osgoode or York 5, Western 3, Toronto 2, and Queen’s 1). Two are from western Canada (Alberta, Saskatchewan), two from the UK (Manchester, Oxford) and one from the US (Cornell). The essays are arranged in three parts, the first being subdivided according to subject matter. It is a good thing for criminal law theorists to interest themselves in all facets of the subject. On the other hand, some will be deterred by the presence of essays on topics outside their specialty. It must be said that it is a well-produced book, even containing a subject index. I hope this book has wide circulation.

While recognizing that H.L.A. Hart’s The Concept of Law has exerted a powerful and continuing influence on general jurisprudence, Brian Simpson finds it wanting. Simpson argues that Hart’s determination to make broad generalizations about the nature of a legal system deflected him from the important task of attending to the particularities of actually-existing law. Moreover, he identifies Hart as a ‘hedgehog’ in Isaiah Berlin’s sense: a thinker whose work gives expression to a ‘single central vision’ (in Hart’s case, law as a system of rules). This critique of Hart leads Simpson to argue for an approach to legal philosophy that is more attentive to the details of existing legal systems. But Simpson fails to present his readers with the theoretical approach for which he argues. This essay seeks to make good this deficiency in his response to The Concept of Law. To this end, it uses the writings of two philosophers on whom Simpson draws (Berlin and Michael Oakeshott) with the aim of enriching Hart’s contribution to general jurisprudence. Moreover, it finds in this Hart-Oakeshott-Berlin-based interdisciplinary theory (HOBBIT) a basis on which to throw much light on Britain as a distinctive form of politico-legal life.

In The Problem of Political Authority, Michael Huemer argues for anarchism, and so against the authority of state-made law and against the moral legitimacy of the use of force to compel obedience to this kind of law. He explains why the state lacks legitimate authority before suggesting reasons to think that it isn’t necessary as a source of social order. He opts for minimalist moral foundations, eschewing any sort of elaborate normative theory in favor of the intuitionist approach to moral reasoning he defended in his earlier Ethical Intuitionism; his decision to opt for minimalist foundations should make the book accessible to readers inclined to endorse a wide range of normative assumptions.