Paul asked:

Is there a way in which the British legal philosopher can be regarded as a defender of law's
autonomy? What is exactly the Rule of Recognition and how can we account for its legitimacy?

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The type of legal philosopher who defends the law's autonomy is a formalist, as opposed to a
philosopher who argues in favour of natural law, such as H.L.A. Hart who introduced the Rule of
Recognition. However, there are problems with a formalist view.

Hart believed that the law was to some extent open because where there is no clear written legal
guideline a judge will have to create new law. This is clearly true for case law. The formalist, on the
other hand, argues that the legal system is a closed system and there is no discretionary law made
by judges. This is obviously false given that case law is always created by judges. Although judges
have to follow decisions made in previous like cases, where precedent is lacking, new law must be
made. Furthermore, statutory law must be complied with by judges, but sometimes a statute is open
to interpretation and when a judge interprets a statute in a particular way, he lays that interpretation
down as law.

Hart thought that the law imposed rules of obligation. In a primitive society there are primary rules of
obligation which are restrictions on violence, theft and deception, and if a society is to survive the
majority should accept these rules. There are three defects in the rules, one of which is uncertainty
and there are three secondary rules which eliminate the defects, one of which is the rule of
recognition which aims to eliminate uncertainty.

Uncertainty is doubt concerning the scope of primary rules and the problem that there is no procedure
or authority to settle uncertainties. The rules of recognition become enacted rules. So on Hart's
description, the law arises from a natural state of a society and there is reliance on the acceptance of
obligation and recognition of normativity by members of the society.

Although I mentioned the problems of formalism above, legal philosophers can still defend autonomy
of the law since judges' rulings are part of the legal system, and their interpretations of statutes are
not independent decision-making but directly derived from the wording. Another problem for the
formalist is that law gets overturned and lacks stability, but what Hart calls rules of change are also
internal to the system.

You could look at the following: Raz "The Autonomy of Legal Reasoning", Ratio Juris6 (1993), Raz
The Authority of Law,Dworkin Law's Empire,and Finnis "The Authority of Law in the Predicament of
Contemporary Social Theory", Ethics and Public Policy(1984), 115.

Rachel Browne