Joseph Raz

Ethics in the public domain : essays in the morality of law and politics

Part 1 The ethics of well-being - political implications: duties of well-being rights and individual well-being facing diversity - the case of epistemic abstinence liberalism, scepticism and democracy national self-determination (with Avishai Margalit) free expression and personal identification multiculturalism - a liberal perspective. Part 2 Between law and morality: the problem about the nature of law the inner logic of the law legal rights authority, law and morality the relevance of coherence on the autonomy of legal reasoning the obligation to obey - revision and tradition government by consent the politics of the rule of law.

From normativity to responsibility

1. The Hope PART ONE: REGARDING NORMATIVITY 2. Practical Reasons: Explanatory and Normative 3. Reasons: Practical and Adaptive 4. The Guise of the Good 5. Reason, Rationality & Normativity PART TWO: REGARDING PRACTICAL REASONING 6. Epistemic Modulations 7. Practical Reasoning 8. The Myth of Instrumental Rationality 9. Reasons in Conflict 10. Numbers: With and Without Contractualism 11. Promoting Value? PART THREE: ON RESPONSIBILITY 12. Being in the World 13. Responsibility and the Negligence Standard

The concept of a legal system: an introduction to the theory of legal system

What does it mean to assert or deny the existence of a legal system? How can one determine whether a given law belongs to a certain legal system? What kind of structure do these systems have, that is-what necessary relations obtain between their laws? The examination of these problems in this volume leads to a new approach to traditional jurisprudential question, though the conclusions are based on a critical appraisal, particularly those of Bentham, Austin, Kelsen, and Hart.

Two Views of the Nature of the Theory of Law: A Partial Comparison

In Laws Empire Prof. Ronald Dworkin has advanced a new theory of law, complex and intriguing. He calls it law as integrity. But in some ways the more radical and surprising claim he makes is that not only were previous legal philosophers mistaken about the nature of law, they were also mistaken about the nature of the philosophy of law or jurisprudence. Perhaps it is possible to summarize his main contentions on the nature of jurisprudence in three theses: First, jurisprudence is interpretive: “General theories of law… aim to interpret the main point and structure of legal practice” ( LE , 90). Second, legal philosophy cannot be a semantic account of the word “law.” Legal philosophers “cannot produce useful semantic theories of law” (id.). Third, legal philosophy or jurisprudence “is the general part of adjudication, silent prologue to any decision at law” (id.).

Explaining Normativity: On Rationality and the Justification of Reason

Aspects of the world are normative in as much as they or their existence constitute reasons for persons, i.e. grounds which make certain beliefs, moods, emotions, intentions or actions appropriate or inappropriate. Our capacities to perceive and understand how things are, and what response is appropriate to them, and our ability to respond appropriately, make us into persons, i.e. creatures with the ability to direct their own life in accordance with their appreciation of themselves and their environment, and of the reasons with which, given how they are, the world presents them. An explanation of normativity would explain the various puzzling aspects of this complex phenomenon. In particular it would explain how it is that aspects of the world can constitute reasons for cognitive, emotive, and volitional responses; how it is that we can come to realise that certain cognitive, emotional or volitional responses are appropriate in various circumstances, and inappropriate in others; and how it is that we can respond appropriately. This paper explores an aspect of the last of these questions.

INCORPORATION BY LAW

My purpose here is to examine the question of how the law can be incorporated within morality and how the existence of the law can impinge on our moral rights and duties, a question (or questions) which is a central aspect of the broad question of the relation between law and morality. My conclusions cast doubts on the incorporation thesis, that is, the view that moral principles can become part of the law of the land by incorporation.

Human Rights in the Emerging World Order

ABSTRACT Pursuing the so-called political account of human rights, this talk first explains some aspects of the relations between legal and moral rights, and between rights and interests, and then applies the analysis to provide an explanation of human rights. Using the rights to health and to education as examples, it rejects the traditional theory that takes human rights to be rights that people have in virtue of their humanity alone. But human rights are synchronically universal. They are rights which all people living today have, a feature that is a precondition of, and a result of, the fact that they set limits to state sovereignty and justify accountability across borders. Human rights function in the international arena to underline the worth of all human life. They give individual interests a central place in international relations, and have become a distinctive ingredient in the emerging world order where they generate new channels for political action in the international arena. They are by their nature moral rights that call for legal-political protection. Needless to say mechanisms for their protection should be efficient, reliable and fair, or they may cause more harm than good. Moral rights that cannot be fairly and effectively protected though legal processes are not human rights. The discussion of these points highlights the fact that the political account of human rights takes their existence to be contingent on social, economic and cultural factors, and the rights to health and to education are used to illustrate this dependence on factual contingencies. The fast-changing structures of the international scene include changes and challenges in the content and protection of human rights. The paper concludes with a discussion of the difficulties that cultural diversity creates for identifying the content of such rights, and for devising mechanisms for their protection.

On Respect, Authority, and Neutrality: A Response

I owe a great debt to Professors Wall, Darwall, and Green for their willingness to challenge, develop, and question some of my publications, which forced me to confront a few of the shortcomings in my views and, I hope, to clarify and improve some of them. Given the diversity of the topics, I respond to each separately. I aimed to avoid minor points and to write only on matters which affect the cogency of my views or theirs on important issues. For that reason, as well as for reasons of space, not all the issues they raise are dealt with. Green explains and criticizes one of the most basic aspects of my view: the way in which values provide reasons. They do so in two ways: we have reasons to engage with value, but we also have to respect value, meaning respect what has value for the value it has. He subjects my account of respect to close scrutiny, and my response will start there, before moving to examine Wall’s suggestion that considerations not unrelated to respect argue for the adoption of a moderate principle of political neutrality. Darwall’s critique of my account of authority appears to relate to one albeit central application of the foregoing theory of value and reason, but is in fact much more far reaching, challenging my view about the way values provide reasons, and my reaction to it will conclude this reply.

The Claims of Reflective Equilibrium

As well as propounding a theory of justice, Rawls’ A Theory of Justice advocated a method in moral philosophy, the method of reflective equilibrium. My aim is to raise doubts concerning the significance and value of this method. I will first briefly describe the process of reasoning dubbed by Rawls Reflective Equilibrium. I will then examine some of the claims made for it by Rawls, Nielsen, and others.

Dworkin: A New Link in the Chain

This book brings together nineteen of the articles published by Professor Dworkin over the last eight years, mostly in the New York Review of Books, but also in learned journals and collections. Three articles, none of them of major importance, have not been published before: Can a Liberal State Support Art? (pp. 221-36),1 On Interpretation and Objectivity (pp. 167-80),2 and Civil Disobedience and Nuclear Protest (pp. 10418).3 Several pieces published during the last few years are not included, of which the most important is an article on equality.4 The book lacks thematic unity, but it will be welcome as not only does it bring together many of Dworkins influential articles, but it makes available to a wider audience several articles not widely known before. Of these, two are of particular importance. Principle, Policy, Procedure (pp. 72-103) applies Dworkins general theory of adjudication, with its emphasis on individual rights, to issues of evidence and procedure whose sensitivity to the public costs of the judicial process seems to undermine Dworkins apparent view that in adjudication, rights should take precedence over issues of public policy, such as administrative expedience. The second, Do We Have a Right to Pornography? (pp. 335-72) is not