 Austin was aware of some of these lines of attack, and had responses ready; it is another matter whether his responses were adequate. It should also be noted that Austin’s work shows a silence on questions of methodology, though this may be forgivable, given the early stage of jurisprudence. As discussed in an earlier section, in many ways, Austin was blazing a new path. On matters of methodology, later commentators on Austin’s work have had difficulty determining whether he is best understood as making empirical claims about the law or conceptual claims; elements of each sort of approach can be found in his writings (Lobban 1991: pp. 224–225; Cotterrell 2003: pp. 81–83).