What is the Internal Point of View?

John Austin famously claimed that the idea of sanctions is “the key to the science of jurisprudence.” Thus, he held legal rules to be threats backed by sanctions and statements of legal obligations as predictions that the threatened sanctions will be carried out. And before The Concept of Law was published in 1961, the concept of sanctions was central to every other positivistic theory of law as well. Although Hans Kelsen sought to explain legal rules and obligations in terms of norms, he understood these norms to be directives to courts requiring that sanctions be applied. Splitting the difference between Austin and Kelsen, Alf Ross conceived of legal rules as norms addressed to courts directing the use of sanctions and statements of legal validity as predictions that these norms will be followed. In The Concept of Law, Hart showed that sanction-centered accounts of every stripe ignored an essential feature of law. This feature he termed Athe internal point of view.@ Seen from the internal point of view, the law is not simply sanction-threatening, directing, or -predicting, but rather obligation-imposing. Though the internal point of view is perhaps Hart=s greatest contribution to jurisprudential theory, this concept is also often and easily misunderstood. This is unfortunate, not only because these misreadings distort Hart’s theory, but, more importantly, because they prevent us from appreciating the true infirmities of sanctioncentered theories and the compelling reasons why they ought to be rejected.