ABSTRACT
Modern jurisprudence does aspire to great generality, and there is the question of how even that can be done. Whatever else it does, a general theory of law has at its core an account of the nature of law. Hart said that law is a system of social rules and that every legal system includes rules that guide law's subjects, together with rules that identify, change, and apply the conduct-guiding rules, the whole thing bottoming-out in customary rules practiced by officials and actually used as standards of guidance and appraisal. Morality judges law; moral attitudes shape the law; law has moral ambitions; and morality may bear on the validity of law. Grant Lamond plausibly argued that existence of coercion in the law does not reduce to the question whether law necessarily provides sanctions; there may be less direct ways in which coercion features.
