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In much of the opening half of The Concept of Law, H.L.A. Hart set the stage for the elaboration of his own jurisprudential theory as he first dissected the model [...], This paper first recapitulates the objections by H.L.A. Hart to the ways in which John Austin's command model of law obfuscated the importance and the very existence of power-conferring laws. Although those objections are familiar in the world of contemporary legal philosophy, their insightfulness is highlighted here because they contrast so sharply with Hart's own neglect of power-conferring laws at some key junctures in his theorizing. In the second half of this paper, I ponder a few of the junctures where Hart failed to heed the admonitions which he had so deftly leveled against Austin. Keywords: HLA Hart; Legal Positivism; John Austin; Legal Powers; Power-Conferring Laws; Neil MacCormick; Duty-Imposing Laws

Introduction Over half a century ago, H.L.A. Hart identified three central yet unresolved questions in legal philosophy: "How does law differ from and how is it related to orders backed [...], Individuals sometimes do things that they know will violate the terms of a statute. Most scholars deny that such actions are always morally wrong, but a coherent theoretical account of the relationships between 1) moral obligation, 2) legal obligation, and 3) criminal wrongdoing that can robustly classify hard cases has been elusive. This article starts with a Kantian account of the relationship between law and morality, and it proposes two closely related standards: one for legal obligation, and another for criminal wrongdoing. It then tests the plausibility and resilience of these standards by using them to generate illuminating new analyses of classic hypothetical cases involving alleged crimes committed under circumstances of necessity. These analyses offer reason to believe that the standards proposed in this article can anchor a Kantian theory of criminal responsibility that is simultaneously rigorous and humane. Keywords: Legal Philosophy; Criminal Law; Legal Obligation; Immanuel Kant; Necessity