"Few questions concerning human society have been asked with such persistence and answered by serious thinkers in so many diverse, strange, and even paradoxical ways as the question 'What is law?'"
Chap. 1, p. 1

"For [the book's] purpose is not to provide a definition of law, in the sense of a rule by reference to which the correctness of the use of the word can be tested; it is to advance legal theory by providing an improved analysis of the distinctive structure of a municipal legal system and a better understanding of the resemblances and differences between law, coercion, and morality, as types of social phenomena."
Chap. 1, p. 17

"The concept of general orders backed by threats given by one generally obeyed ... plainly approximates closer to a penal statute enacted by the legislature of a modern state than to any other variety of law." (Chapter 2, 24)

"The originally simple idea...