Moreover, Bentham's legal theory, which immediately led to legal positivism, is the bedrock of some brutal mishaps, which led to the disturbance of world peace and security. In Germany, it led to the rise of Nazi party, in Italy, Mussolini and the fascist part and in Spain, France and the rest of other atrocities that accompanied legal positivism in the world today. These rules were inspired by legal positivism to enact draconian and inhuman laws with which they committed many atrocities. Their activities led to the Second World War. In fact, it could be argued that legal positivism led to both the first and second world wars. Further investigations have revealed that fundamental human rights have been brutally eroded as a result of the introduction of legal positivism in our legal systems.
The result was that these activities led to the declaration of fundamental human right by the U.N.O. in 1948 and the revival of the Natural law theory by the Neo-Thomists and Neo-kantians. The U.N.O. declared that war were a result of ignorance and violation of human rights and that the only way to maintain peace and security is through the respect of human rights. In all, Hart's concept of law (though a legal positivist) must be seen as one that promotes peace and human rights. Hart tried to give legal positivism a human face but the views of Bentham and Austin did not remove the inherent problems of positivism. What Hart is advocating is that law should be deemed to be effective-only when morality is seen as its essence. In other words, law should be able to determine what human conduct ought to be.
From the foregoing, Hart's concept of law takes man and his need into consideration. Man needs equal opportunities and equitable distribution of resources. But how does law help to strike a social-political harmony and economic viability in order for man to express his basic abilities, actualize his potentials and satisfy his needs? The extent to which man can realize his ambition and meet up his demand in a policy depends largely on the type of polity in question and the structure of that polity is determined by how dynamic or rigid its law are. On this basis we want to agree with Hart that law should not be seen as a command of a sovereign backed by sanction or threat of punishment of force.
It is our belief that the multidimensional nature of man's needs and purposes can only be satisfied if we do not take law as a command. As a command it will not only jeopardize the aims of law, it will also distort the whole gamut of the legal system of a polity, it will deny man his political and social harmony and economic viability, which in no small way help man in his basic abilities and the actualization of his potentials. Besides the above functions law, according to Hart, is applied for the maintenance of just relationship and just allocation of resources. It provides for the oppressed to seek redress and compensation.
Apart from reconciling law with morality, according to Hart, there is power-conferring law such as the one to empower some officials to perform a particular act. This kind of law cannot pass as a command. This means that Hart's concept of law is rooted on social habits. It is rooted on social habit because in a sense, it promotes good habit and avoids evil or bad behaviour in society. It mould social policies and inculcates rational decisions in legal processes among judges. Not only is the concept rooted in social habits, it presents a good example of justice in the administration of law in treating like-cases alike. In this light, Hart says, natural procedural justice consists therefore of those principles of objectivity and impartiality in the administration of law which implements just this aspect of law and which are designed to ensure that rules are applied only to what are genuine cases of the rule or at least to minimize the risk of inequalities in this sense.
Ancient civilization we must say sought after virtues, we of today seek for values and facts and values say Max Weber are absolutely heterogeneous. Legitimacy and justice (and love in the Christian ethics) remain principles of virtue, fact and value central to the affairs of any polity. It is with them that the issues of authority, power, coercion, stability and so on become meaningful within a polity. It is in this sense that Hart sees law as the embodiment of the evolution of justice and good conduct.
The attempt made by Hart in his concept of law, was to bring back rationalistic and idealistic tendencies into law so as to give social habits and policies a strong foundation in any polity. One can say that Hart's idea of law is an improvement on the on the views of the legal posit ivist, because he tried to expose the dangers of separating law from morality. Austin's opinion about the non-existence not only of Natural law but also of international law really shows the limitation of his idea of law. And the concept of law, which resolves around sanctions, cannot be a complete reflection of law as it actually is. Hart's criticism of this review is that surely, a legal system requires some form of sanctions (actual or threatened) to make it effective, but it is demonstrably fallacious to suppose that every single rule of law must necessary have attached to it a sanction.
Therefore, we can understand from Hart's view that legal positivists have never been able to live up to its legalistic and anti-metaphysical assumptions. The very nature of its subject-matter has compelled it time and again to violate its own assumptions and make use of fundamental principles not reveled by positive law. In this light, legal positivists attempt to work out a positive system of law, cannot be said to be true or valid legal system. Law as we all know is a social institution that recognizes morality and public interest. It brings justice and fairness in political and social life of the public. And we must understand that the law exists for the state and her citizenry. But if we see law as only a command of the sovereign, public interest will suffer and there will be friction between the state, the leadership and the citizenry.
Furthermore, the concept of law, according to Hart also takes account human vulnerability. Owing to men's vulnerability and his being prone to attack, it becomes necessary to restrain men from attacking one another. Hence, law and morality are generally formulated in negative form as prohibitions rather that in the positive form as legal positivists (Betham and Austin) present it. So in all human endevour , the most important thing in social life are those laws that recognizes law and morality as one which will invariably restrict the use of violence in killing or inflicting bodily harm to members of the public.
Another contribution we must mention here is what Hart called limited altruism. Men, according to Hart, have a limited altruism. Hobes in fact supported this view and maintained that men are neither angels nor devils, neither predominantly selfish, nor completely altruistic. Rather, they have a limited altruism. In other words, human altruism is limited in range and intermittent, and the tendencies to aggression are frequent enough to be fatal to social life if not controlled. To check man's limited altruism and their tendency to aggression and violence, Hart demanded and advocated for a system of rules of forbearance.
