Half a century has passed since H. L. A. Hart and L. L. Fuller had a debate concerning relationship between law and morality that took place when Hart gave a Holmes Lecture at Harvard Law School in his visit 1957. This debate was an epoch-making event in the history of philosophy of law because it formed a type of controversies usually performed between natural law theorists and legal positivists.
In this article the author examines the significance of the debate in the context of later development of philosophical reflections on law. Hart achieved a sophisticated form of legal positivism which later philosophers of law called soft version, and it exerted large influence on the philosophical discourses on law. Fuller proposed a way of thinking of law as purposive enterprise which inherently have morality without which orders named law could not even exist.
During 50 years the basic themes of that debate have been repeatedly visited and philosophers of law developed some clues which Hart and Fuller left in various directions. For example R. Dworkin, who is a champion of anti-positivistic camp, articulated conception of integrity as legal virtue that Fuller conceived as a restraint to an excessive purposive interpretation, as a discrete legal ideal among other legal values(justice and fairness).
In the midst of developing these clues which remained after Hart/Fuller debate, especially by Dworkin’s attack on legal positivism, legal positivism was splitted into two camps, inclusive and exclusive version. This split means that legal positivism is not so much a conception of law proved by linguistic or any other experience as one that has itself some presuppositions concerning values that the legal positivists usually deny that they have.
In the sense that it had preoccupied important sources of future development, Hart/Fuller debate was an remarkable achievement of the mid-20 century legal philosophy, and it still has actual meaning for any positions of this field of the study.