A Life of H.L.A. Hart: The Nightmare and the Noble Dream

Melbourne University Law Review, April, 2005 by G. Edward White

A Life of H L A Hart: The Nightmare and the Noble Dream by Nicola Lacey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) pages i-xxii, 1-422. Price A$69.95 (hardcover). ISBN 0 19 927497 5.

[This review addresses a number of difficulties associated with the task of writing a biography of a legal academic whose family has granted the biographer special access to the subject's private papers. Nicola Lacey's A Life of H L A Hart faces the burdens of making the life of a legal academic interesting without being unduly affected by this special access. This can lead to the overt emphasising of information that might have some appeal as the source of gossip but is arguably of marginal value in a study of the ideas and career of a legal scholar. The review assesses how successfully Lacey surmounts those difficulties.]

Authorised biography can be a treacherous undertaking. (1) Biographies of academics can be deadly in their insularity. (2) Biographies of persons associated with the law bear a burden associated with the recondite aspects of that profession. (3) Gossipy biographies, especially those of scholars, run the risk of being seen as gratuitous. Thus Nicola Lacey's A Life of H L A Hart might be said (to borrow from one of her own sports metaphors) to start with a four--nil deficit. (4)

How successfully does Lacey overcome the above difficulties? This review proceeds by describing and evaluating Lacey's strategy for overcoming them. It concludes by making an overall assessment of A Life of H L A Hart.

I

Lacey met Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart in 1979, when he was serving as a Research Fellow at University College, Oxford, having retired from its chair of jurisprudence 11 years earlier. Lacey was 21 and a graduate student in law; Hart was 72 at the time. Despite the difference in their ages, Lacey developed a close relationship with both Hart and his wife, the Oxford historian Jenifer Williams Hart. (5) In 1992 Hart died, and in 1999, having published her own autobiography a year earlier, (6) Jenifer made an offer to Lacey. She would give Lacey access to Hart's papers, and some of her own, help organise those papers, and generally cooperate with Lacey in the preparation of a biography of H L A Hart. Although Lacey states that A Life of H L A Hart is 'not an authorized biography', she means this 'in the sense that Jenifer Hart did not read it before publication.' (7) A closer look at Lacey's sources suggests that the book has an authorised quality.

Not only did Lacey have the full cooperation of Jenifer in the compilation of the biography, but a draft of her book was also read by three of Hart's children. Her acknowledgements also include 'many of [Hart's] friends, colleagues, and students' whom she interviewed between March 2000 and December 2003. (8) As she proceeded with her research, many friends, former colleagues and students of Hart supplied her with unpublished material, including diaries, student notes, letters, and interviews with Hart. Since the narrative of Lacey's book extends deep into the 20th century, many of the characters in that narrative--including Jenifer and the Hart children--are still alive, and Lacey profited considerably from their good auspices. (9)

One example can serve as an illustration. Professor A M (Tony) Honore first moved into Hart's ambit after he became a law Fellow of Queens College, Oxford, in 1948 (Hart had left law practice to take a fellowship at University College three years earlier). Honore was interested in legal philosophy and, together with the philosopher Anthony Woozley, introduced the first interdisciplinary seminar at Oxford, titled 'Philosophy and Legal Concepts', in the 1951-52 academic year. (10) Hart gave a paper at the seminar, and he and Honore began 'to meet for casual conversations' about law and philosophy. (11) This led to their collaboration, Causation in the Law. (12) Lacey characterises Hart and Honore's relationship as 'an unarticulated intimacy founded on explicit intellectual connection and an implicit emotional affinity', in which '[Hart] went to lengths beyond what was due from his professorial responsibility to smooth the path of his younger colleague's career.' (13) Honore was among the first people Lacey interviewed after agreeing to do the biography. In her acknowledgments Lacey states that Honore 'provided unstinting support and important material on jurisprudence teaching at Oxford in the 1950s.' (14)

Biographers of subjects whose close friends and associates are still alive quickly learn the value of gaining the support of persons who knew the subject well and may have unpublished information to share. Perceptions of the biographer within those networks of associates can have a decisive effect on the biographer's access to that information. (15) Lacey was in the enviable position of beginning Hart's biography with Jenifer Hart's good auspices. Further, she herself possessed academic credentials that might well have impressed potential interviewees. Given this starting point, two tacit assumptions might be said to have framed Lacey's research. One was that she could be expected to write a sympathetic biography of Hart; the second was that if she did not meet that expectation, her information--much of it from elderly sources--might dissipate.