Philip Soper

Choosing a Legal Theory on Moral Grounds

I. INTRODUCTION Twenty-five years is roughly the time that has elapsed since the exchange between H. L. A. Hart and Lon Fuller and the subsequent revival in this country of the natural law/positivism debate. During this time, a curious thing has happened to legal positivism. What began as a conceptual theory about the distinction between law and morality has now been turned, at least by some, into a moral theory. According to this theory, the reason we must see law and morality as separate is not (at least not entirely) because of the logic of our language, but because of the practical implications of holding one or the other of the two traditional views in this area. The natural law theorist, it is said, can connect law and morality only at the cost of investing official directives with undeserved moral authority, thus encouraging obedience where there should be none. The natural law position should therefore be rejected – and the positivists accepted – on moral grounds.

Legal Theory and the Problem of Definition

Natural Law and Natural Rights is a refreshingly direct book about some decidedly difficult matters. It is also a book that refuses to do homage to the complexity of its subject by limiting the topics covered. Here is virtually a mini-treatise in moral philosophy, with illuminating discussions on the whole range of human value1 and on a good part of the related range of metaethics,2 legal theory,

Two Puzzles from the Postscript

political theory, and the problems of methodology in the

Epistemic Uncertainty and Legal Theory by Brian Burge-Hendrix (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2008). [ISBN 978-0-7546-7521-1.] All page references in parentheses are to this book.

Conversions occur in legal theory about as often as they do in religion, which is to say rarely—so rarely that they fascinate as much for the fact that they happen at all as for the reasons they happen. It should not surprise, then, that the Postscript to H.L.A. Harts famous work on jurisprudence reveals “the outstanding English philosopher of law of the twentieth century” reaffirming, rather than revising in any significant way, the two central tenets that distinguish his theory from that of both classical natural law theorists and modern “new naturalists” like Ronald Dworkin: (1) There is no necessary connection between law and morality; and (2) judges inevitably confront cases where the decision is “not dictated by the law” and the judge “must act as a conscientious legislator would by deciding according to his own beliefs and values” (p. 273).

Knowledge and Politics

Making the perspective of insiders critical to a theory of law, including particularly those who accept and enforce legal standards, has been the hallmark of corrections to John Austin’s theory at least since Hart’s The Concept of Law . Burge-Hendrix’s book continues this tradition and brings its insights to bear on the particular dispute between inclusive and exclusive positivists. That being said, the project has always seemed to me to be incomplete. If the participant’s perspective is indeed the critical one, then the recognition that participants make normative claims about the concept of law itself (not just about their legal standards) surely deserves its own proper place in a legal theory. Those normative claims about law range, at the very least, from claims that coercion is (morally) justified to claims of (moral) authority. If these claims turn out to be false in cases of laws that are extremely unjust, then either they are not “laws” at all according to the participants’ own views (in which case the natural law theorists are correct.) Or, participants will have to give up their normative claims about law and recognize that all that counts is pedigree and the power to coerce. In that case, we will be back to Austin’s coercive account of law, and much of the dispute between exclusive and inclusive positivists will be irrelevant.