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Les Green is the Professor of the Philosophy of Law and Fellow of Balliol College. He also holds a part-time appointment as Professor of Law and Distinguished University Fellow at Queen's University in Canada. After beginning his teaching career as a fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, he moved to Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto. He has also been a visiting professor at many other law faculties, including Berkeley, NYU, Chicago and, for some years, at the University of Texas at Austin. Professor Green writes and teaches in the areas of jurisprudence, constitutional theory, and moral and political philosophy. He serves on the board of several journals and is co-editor of the annual Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Law and of the book series Oxford Legal Philosophy.
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2012
L Green, 'Jurisprudence for Foxes' (2012) 3 Transnational Legal Theory 150 [...]
This paper contests Brian Simpson's claim that HLA Hart's book, The Concept of Law, is that of a 'hedgehog,' that is, a procrustean and monistic thinker. It is not. Hart's work is pluralist both in its explanatory concepts and in its evaluative background. It is, of course, a philosophical book; but that is not enough to make it monistic. Some conjectures are offered as to why Simpson so badly misunderstood Hart, and as to why analytic legal philosophy is misunderstood, or distrusted, more generally.
2011
L Green, 'Sex-Neutral Marriage' (2011) 64 Current Legal Problems 1 [...]
DOI: 10.1093/clp/cur014
A different-sex marriage need not be a marriage between heterosexuals, and a same-sex marriage need not be a marriage between homosexuals. This shows how little the law of marriage cares about the sexuality of parties to a marriage; it does not show that sex-restricted marriage laws do not discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation. They do. Neither does the law care much about sex, let alone possibly procreative sex, within marriage. The voidability of a different-sex marriage on grounds of non-consummation does not show otherwise. The formation of a valid marriage was always a matter of consent, not coitus. But what should happen to the doctrine of non-consummation in a sex-neutral marriage regime? It is an anachronism that should be abolished.
ISBN: 0070-1998
2010
L Green, 'Two Worries about Respect for Persons' (2010) 120 Ethics 212
2009
L Green, 'Filosofia del derecho general' (2009) 3 Problema: anuario de filosofia y teoria del derecho 289 [...]
Spanish translation of 'General Jurisprudence: a 25th Anniversary Essay'. Translated by Enrique Rodriguez Trujano & Pedro A. Villarreal Lizarraga.
2008
L Green, 'Positivism and the Inseparability of Law and Morals' (2008) 83 New York University Law Review 1035 [...]
This article seeks to clarify and assess HLA Hart's famous claim that legal positivism somehow involves a “separation of law and morals.” The paper contends that Hart's “separability thesis” should not be confused with the “social thesis,” with the “sources thesis,” or with a methodological thesis about jurisprudence. In contrast to all of these, Hart's separability thesis denies the existence of any necessary (conceptual) connections between law and morality. But that thesis is false: there are many necessary connections between law and morality, some of them conceptually significant. Among them is an important negative connection: law is of its nature morally fallible and morally risky. Lon Fuller emphasized what he called the “internal morality of law,” the “morality that makes law possible”. Hart’s most important message is that there is also an immorality that law makes possible. Law's nature is seen not only in its internal virtues, in legality, but also in its internal vices, in legalism.
ISBN: 0028-7881
On Monday, February 25, Professor Leslie Green attended a celebration at Queens University, Canada to mark the recent publication of the third edition of H L A Hart's The Concept of Law (OUP 2012) [more…]
Teaching: Philosophy of Law; Human Rights Law
Research: Legal Philosophy, Jurisprudence, Constitutional Theory, Human Rights
Co-ordinator of Research
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other affiliation(s):
Balliol College
Oxford OX1 3BJ
