Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Noam Gur
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Legitimate Authority ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Legal Validity ◽  
The Law

This chapter presents the book’s topic, i.e. law’s interaction with practical reasons, demarcates the scope of the book, and clarifies some key notions relevant to the inquiry. Specific issues commented on include, inter alia, the book’s working assumptions on the criteria of legal validity (Section 1.1.1); the relevance of arguments about authority (Section 1.1.2); and the type of reasons central to the inquiry (Section 1.2). Finally, the chapter sets out the two principal positions examined in Parts I and II: first, Raz’s position that when the law satisfies certain conditions that invest it with legitimate authority, it acquires pre-emptive force, namely it constitutes reasons for action that exclude and take the place of some other reasons; and, second, an antithetical position, the weighing model, which explains the relevant phenomenon in terms of reasons for action that compete with other reasons by means of their weight (Section 1.3).

The Dispositional Model Expounded

2018 ◽  
pp. 135-160
Author(s):  
Noam Gur
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Model Section ◽  
The Law ◽  
Initial Description ◽  
Alternative Understanding

In this chapter, an alternative understanding of law’s relationship with practical reasons is introduced, which is labelled the dispositional model. According to this model, the existence and operation of a reasonably just and well-functioning legal system constitutes some reasons that are neither ordinary reasons for action nor pre-emptive ones, but rather reasons to adopt an (overridable) disposition that inclines its possessor towards compliance with the system’s requirements. Following an initial description of this model (Section 1), several aspects of the model are elucidated in further detail, including the sense in which notions such as ‘attitudes’ and ‘dispositions’ are used by the model (Section 7.2); the formation and components of the law-abiding attitude that features in the model (Section 7.3); and the key distinguishing traits that set this model apart from the pre-emption thesis and the weighing model (Section 7.4).

On the Legitimacy of Expectations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Brown
Keyword(s):  
Basic Structure ◽  
Legitimate Authority ◽  
Complex Theory ◽  
Role Responsibility ◽  
Administrative Agencies ◽  
Substantive Justice ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law

Section I identifies the weaknesses in existing accounts which locate the legitimacy of expectations in underpinning laws and legal entitlements (the Law-Based Account), in the substantive justice of expectations and/or the justice of the basic structure which forms the background to expectations (the Justice-Based Account), or in the legitimacy of the governing agencies and political authorities whose acts and omissions are both the cause and the subject of expectations (the Legitimate Authority-Based Account). Section II introduces a rival account, the Responsibility-Based Account, according to which the legitimacy of expectations depends on the responsibility of governmental administrative agencies for bringing about agent’s expectations, allied to those agencies already having been given or having assumed a role responsibility for making binding decisions affecting the important interests of agents. Finally, Section III expounds in more detail the complex theory of responsibility that undergirds the Responsibility-Based Account.

The Law of the Father, the Law of the Land: Power, Gender and Race in The Shield

2007 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 659-673 ◽  
Author(s):  
MIKE CHOPRA-GANT
Keyword(s):  
Race Relations ◽  
White Male ◽  
Legitimate Authority ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Real Power ◽  
Gender And Race ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
The Law ◽  
And Gender

This article examines the construction of gender and race in the television series The Shield (FX 2002–). The article argues that while The Shield seems to offer an ostensibly progressive vision of a multi-cultural society in which race and gender represent no barrier to the possession of legitimate authority, the series premises the possibility of such access to power on the continuing possession of “real” power by a paternalistic white, male figure, thus presenting a regressive conservative vision of gender and race relations in contemporary US society.

Regulatory Coherence

2021 ◽  
pp. 51-88
Author(s):  
Caroline E. Foster
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Law Of The Sea ◽  
Legitimate Authority ◽  
International Tribunal ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
Regulatory Standards ◽  
International Court ◽  
United Nations Convention ◽  
The Law ◽  
Advisory Opinions

Part II comprises two chapters, Chapter Three and Chapter Four. These chapters together investigate the decisions and advisory opinions of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) and United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) Annex VII tribunals, as well as other Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) cases. The courts and tribunals studied in these chapters make use of a broad range of interpretive methodologies in identifying emerging global regulatory standards, including reliance on the inbuilt logic of the regulatory schemes they are applying. The standards articulated make relatively minimal demands on domestic legal systems compared with more demanding standards that could have been developed. In this respect the standards appear to enhance traditional procedural justifications for international law’s claim to legitimate authority. Chapter Three focuses on tests for ‘regulatory coherence’.

Aquinas and the Ontological Flexibility of Law

2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 377-386
Author(s):  
Matthew Schaeffer
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Saint Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Legal Validity ◽  
The Law

When Saint Thomas Aquinas makes claims such as “that which is not just seems to be no law at all” it is a bit difficult to discern what he means. Some think that Aquinas is defending what is now called the Strong Natural Law Thesis: for all X, X is a law only if X is just. Others think that Aquinas is defending what is now called the Weak Natural Law Thesis: for all X, X is a non-defective law only if X is just. In this paper, focusing on Aquinas’s metaphysics, I argue that both of these interpretations are mistaken. Aquinas is primarily defending what we can call The Metaphysical Natural Law Thesis: since being and goodness are convertible, legal validity (i.e., the existence or being of a law) comes in degrees—and this entails that the justice of a law literally increases the amount of being a law possesses, while the injustice of a law literally decreases the amount of being a law possesses. On this interpretation, then, the injustice of a law entails an ontological attenuation of the law without entailing an ontological annihilation of the law.

scholarly journals Soft Law, Authoritative Advice and Non-binding Agreements

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 507-525
Author(s):  
Andrei Marmor
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Soft Law ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
Legal Obligations ◽  
The Subject

Abstract One of the most fascinating developments in the domain of international law in the last few decades is the astonishing proliferation of non-binding legal instruments or soft law, namely, norms or directives explicitly avoiding the imposition of legal obligations on the relevant parties. From a philosophical perspective, this is rather puzzling: how can we explain the idea of a non-binding directive or a non-binding contract? In this article I aim to provide an account of the rationale of soft law from the perspective of the practical reasons in play. First, I analyse the idea of authoritative advice, suggesting that when authorities advise their putative subjects, they purport to give the subject presumptive reasons for action. I explain what presumptive reasons are. Secondly, I suggest the possibility that something very similar is at work in cases of non-binding agreements, coupled with special accountability relations that such agreements invariably constitute.

scholarly journals Administrative Law, Judicial Deference, and the Charter

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Lewans
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
Legitimate Authority ◽  
The Law

The doctrine of judicial deference has been a touchstone in Canadian administrative law for thirty-five years. Put simply, the doctrine recognizes that administrative officials have legitimate authority to interpret the law, which means that judicial review is warranted only if an administrative decision is demonstrably unfair or unreasonable. While the tide of deference has ebbed and flowed over this period, most administrative decisions these days are assessed according to a standard of reasonableness instead of correctness.

Expectations and the Limits of Legal Validity

Utilitas ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-278
Author(s):  
ANDREW T. FORCEHIMES
Keyword(s):  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Legal Validity ◽  
The Law ◽  
Parity Thesis

Drawing on the work of Jeremy Bentham, we can forward a parity thesis concerning formal and substantive legal invalidity. Formal and substantive invalidity are, according to this thesis, traceable to the same source, namely, the sovereign's inability to adjust expectations to motivate obedience. The parity thesis, if defensible, has great appeal for positivists. Explaining why contradictory or contrary mandates yield invalidity is unproblematic. But providing an account of content-based invalidity invites the collapse of the separation between what the law is and what the law ought to be. Grounding formal and substantive invalidity in a unified source – the sovereign's inability to adjust expectations to motivate obedience – allows us to avoid bringing in any additional apparatus that might compromise this separation. This essay fleshes out and defends the parity thesis.

Mission impossible? Bringing charges for the crime of attacking civilians or civilian objects before international criminal tribunals

2008 ◽  
Vol 90 (872) ◽  
pp. 907-930 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolin Wuerzner
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
International Criminal Tribunals ◽  
The Law ◽  
Selection Of

AbstractThree main arguments may explain why few cases in international (and national) criminal law include charges for attacks against civilians or civilian objects. The law may be not sufficiently clear, there may be a lack of evidence or the selection of military targets may be based on mainly subjective considerations, which make it very hard to establish individual culpability. This article examines some legal and practical reasons for the difficulties the prosecutor faces when trying to charge individuals with such crimes. Although there are few examples, the ICTY has shown that it is generally possible to hold individuals responsible for such crimes.

scholarly journals VIRTUAL REALITY AND ETHICAL NEUTRALITY OF THE VIRTUAL SUBJECTS OF LAW

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dragan Mitrović
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Business Communication ◽  
Legal Person ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Traditional Beliefs ◽  
Virtual Characters ◽  
The Third ◽  
Legal Nature ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
The Law

The existence of legal reality implies the existence of the subjects of law as the creations of that reality. The law cannot even exist without its subjects. They are conditio sine qua non for the law. First, natural persons had become the subjects of law – although not all of them and not at the same time, and thereafter their creations - legal (moral) persons, also became the subjects of law. In both cases, it is about traditional virtual legal creations. However, as the information and technological developments could not have bypassed contemporary law, more and more frequently and intensively it is being thought about the third type of the subjects of law – virtual characters as the new subjects of law (law avatars). Today, this is not done out of curiosity, but for very practical reasons – i.e. for promoting business communication that is rapidly migrating to the area of computer virtual reality. Such a change requires reconsideration of traditional beliefs and theories about what a subject of law is. It also requires determining the possible legal nature of virtual characters, irrespective of whether it is about virtual natural or legal persons. When it comes to the explanation of their essence, it seems that at this moment the fiction theory is more acceptable than the reality theory, which might prevail sometime, as it had happened with the subjectivity of the legal person at some point in time in the 17th century.

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