Problems of specification of legal language in Herbert Hart's 1949 doctrine

The article explores a conception of legal discourse proposed by a British philosopher Herbert Hart in his essay The Ascription of Responsibilities and Rights (1949) and later formed a basis of his project of analytical jurisprudence. Features of legal discourse and complexities of its specification are discussed resting on the philosopher's texts and methodology. A view is warranted according to which in his 1949 essay (as in his 1950s works) Hart doesn't offer and doesn't seek to offer clear criteria for specification of legal discourse. Instead he fixes its certain features that do not fit into a traditional, logical and descriptive, model of language. Hence Hart's conception of legal discourse is primarily a general philosophical criticism and reinterpretation of methods of language analysis through an example of a particular speech practice. In this light the author's idea of ascriptivity is not, and isn't intended to be, a universal criterion for a specification of legal discourse. On one hand, this idea is somewhat obscure, given its ambiguous, semantic-pragmatic, use by the philosopher both as a non-factuality of concepts and as a special speech function of statements. On the other hand, according to Hart, it belongs to different types of discourse which involve "social" or institutional concepts and a normative type of reasoning / speaking (a producing speech acts with a help of rules).

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