ABSTRACT
The Concept of Law, nearly forty years old, is on its way to becoming a historical text. The practices of language and law are obvious examples. Those who study languages also speak them; those who are jurisprudential theorists are also subject to law and have opinions about legal issues. The natural sciences seek and deal with universal laws. Psychological explanation cannot be expected to yield universal laws. The common sense interpretation is simply a reiteration of the obvious, that it is possible to study social practices because people also experience them first-hand. The anthropological perspective in general and Hyland's appropriation of it in particular, is a persuasive way of characterizing the distinction between the internal and external points of view. The special self-awareness of the theorist is therefore not an attitude distinctive of the external point of view at all. Ronald Dworkin offers a characterization of law as a social practice.
