Probably Hart’s best-known argument from the opening chapters of his book
is directed at the claim that all laws are commands. It is nowadays often said
that Hart dealt a death blow to command theories of law. For those who think of
jurisprudence as a kind of progressive science of accumulated knowledge, here
was a giant leap forward, a major correction of errors of committed by Bentham,
Austin, and Kelsen.
Except that it wasn’t.
