Legal positivism's ``separation thesis'' is usually taken in one of two ways: as an analytic claim about the nature of law – roughly, as some version of the Social Thesis; or as a substantive claim about the moral value of law – roughly, as some version of the Value Thesis. In this paper I argue that we should recognize a third kind of positivist separation thesis, one which complements, but is distinct from, positivism's analytic and moral claims. The Neutrality Thesis (...) says that the correct analytic claim about the nature of law does not by itself entail any substantive claims about the moral value of law. I give careful formulations of these three separation theses, explain the relationships between them, and sketch the role that each plays in the positivist approach to law. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAccording to the prioritized reason model of precedent, precedential constraint is explained in terms of the need for decision-makers to reconcile their decisions with a settled priority order extracted from past cases. The prioritized reason model of precedent departs from the view that common law rules comprise protected reasons for action. In this article I show that a model utilizing protected reasons and the prioritized reason model of precedential constraint are, in an important sense, equivalent. I then offer some reflections (...) on the philosophical significance of this result. I argue that the protected reason model is consistent with the phenomenology of precedential constraint. I suggest an account of precedential reasoning that reconciles the prioritized reason and protected reason models. (shrink)

Since at least the 1980s, police departments in the United States have embraced a set of practices that aim, not to enable the prosecution of past criminal activity, but to discourage people from breaking the law in the first place. It is not clear that these practices effectively lower the crime rate. However, whatever its effect on the crime rate, I argue that preventive policing is essentially distinct from legal governance, and that excessive reliance on preventive policing undermines legal governance. (...) To show this, I emphasize law’s unique aptitude to define legal subjects’ ‘manifest’ status relations – that is, the rights and obligations that live within their local practices. I then argue, first, that preventive policing does not aim to define these relationships; and second, that excessive preventive policing threatens the relationship that law must bear with its subjects if law is to define their manifest relations authoritatively. (shrink)

The most influential theory of law in current analytic legal philosophy is legal positivism, which generally understands law to be a kind of institution. The most influential theory of institutions in current analytic social philosophy is that of John Searle. One would hope that the two theories are compatible, and in many ways they certainly are. But one incompatibility that still needs ironing out involves the relation of the social rule that undergirds the validity of any legal system (H.L.A. Hart's (...) rule of recognition) to Searle's notion of codification: the idea that institutions need official declarations of their constitutive rules in order to enjoy the full benefits of institutions. The incompatibility arises from the fact that, in order to do its institutional work, the basic validity rule must be codified in Searle's sense—yet, given the particular role it has in legal positivism, it may be impossible to codify in the Searlean sense. In this paper I develop the incompatibility in detail, consider and reject consigning the basic validity rule to Searle's “Background” capacities that support institutional facts, and conclude that the best route to eliminating it while doing a minimum of damage to the two theories is to make a slight emendation to Searle's theory of institutions. (shrink)

This paper suggests a way of thinking about the legal reasoning done by conscientious judges working in a legal system during periods when those judges believed that their Supreme Court was malfunctioning. Seeing a legal system as a shared cooperative activity allows us to best understand how legal decision-making can remain consistent when it contains elements at the highest level which are believed not to be functioning properly.

El problema de los desacuerdos jurídicos puede ser planteado de diferentes modos. En una de sus versiones, el problema viene dado porque el positivismo asume que los conceptos jurídicos son criteriológicos, por lo que el desacuerdo entre juristas carece de sentido al ser una disputa meramente verbal. Plunkett y Sundell han ofrecido una respuesta novedosa a esta crítica que sostiene que no hace falta compartir un concepto para discrepar con sentido. En este trabajo analizaré esa respuesta y ofreceré una serie (...) de críticas contra ella. (shrink)

Hart dedicó poca atención a la regla de adjudicación –lo mismo hizo la literatura especializada. El propósito de este escrito consiste en intentar ir más allá de las escasas indicaciones brindadas por Hart sobre el tema de la regla de adjudicación y detallar la función que desempeña en el seno de su concepción del derecho. El método elegido es esencialmente reconstructivo: no se trata de tomar inspiración en Hart para elaborar una noción propia de regla de adjudicación, sino de poner (...) de relieve las potencialidades –aunque también los límites– de este tipo de regla secundaria. Para ello, en primer lugar se profundizan las conexiones entre la regla de adjudicación, por un lado, y la coacción y la interpretación jurídica, por el otro: el objetivo consiste en dibujar la posición teórica de los jueces, que se desprende, en particular, de la investigación de sus tareas en relación con los casos dudosos y los casos claros. A continuación, tal postura teórica se somete a crítica; prestando atención, en particular, al problema de la definitividad e infalibilidad de las sentencias, se demuestra cómo Hart consideró la aplicación del derecho de forma demasiado declarativa. (shrink)

Joseph Raz famously argues that given that the law necessarily claims authority and given the account of authority he provides, exclusive legal positivism is the only tenable theory of law. In this article, I contend that even if one accepts that the law necessarily claims authority and that Raz's account of authority is correct, it does not follow that exclusive legal positivism is the only tenable theory of law. This is because even if the law necessarily claims authority, it need (...) not be capable of satisfying the requirements for possessing authority laid down by the correct account of authority. Thus, even if exclusive legal positivism is the only theory of law according to which the law can satisfy those requirements, this does not show that exclusive legal positivism is correct. (shrink)

En este artículo exploro algunos de los tópicos vinculados tradicionalmente con el problema de la normatividad del derecho: autonomía, racionalidad, relevancia práctica, razones para la acción y autoridad. Trataré de construir un marco conceptual que refleje la complejidad teórica del problema y las posiciones filosóficas desde los cuales puede ser abordado. Particularmente, me centraré en el análisis de las asunciones filosóficas relacionadas con ciertas posturas y la revisión de su coherencia mutua.