When and why do socially constructed norms—including the laws of the land, norms of etiquette, and informal customs—generate moral obligations? I argue that the answer lies in the duty to respect others, specifically to give them what I call “agency respect.” This is the kind of respect that people are owed in light of how they exercise their agency. My central thesis is this: To the extent that (i) existing norms are underpinned by people’s commitments as agents and (ii) they (...) do not conflict with morality, they place moral demands on us on agency-respect grounds. This view of the moral force of socially constructed norms, I suggest, is superior to views that deny the moral force of such norms, and it elegantly explains certain instances of wrongdoing that would otherwise remain unaccounted for. (shrink)

John Rawls wrote that people can voluntarily acquire political obligations to institutions only on the condition that those institutions are at least reasonably just. When an institution is seriously unjust, by contrast, attempts to create political obligation are “void ab initio.” However, Rawls's own explanation for this thought was deeply problematic, as are the standard alternatives. In this paper, I offer an argument for why Rawls's intuition was right and trace its implications for theories of authority and political obligation. These, (...) I claim, are more radical than is often thought. (shrink)

Does the democratic provenance of the law ground a pro tanto duty to obey the law? According to the social-egalitarian argument, it does, because individuals have a pro tanto duty to uphold relations of social equality, and because, by obeying a democratically made law, they uphold relations of social equality. In this paper, I argue, however, that even if we grant the premisses of the argument, the conclusion still does not follow.

According to a recent wave of work by legal anti-positivists, legal norms are a subset of moral norms. This striking “one-system” view of law has rapidly become the dominant form of anti-positivism, but its implications have so far been little tested. This article argues that the one-system view leads systematically to untenable conclusions about what legal rights and obligations we have. For many clear legal norms, the view lacks the resources to explain the existence of corresponding moral norms. And its (...) criteria for distinguishing legal norms within morality imply an under- or over-inclusive set of legal norms. I stress the special difficulties that apply beyond obligations, in the case of privileges and powers, and I show that the view's problems do not only—or mainly—concern egregiously unjust law, or indeed morally defective law at all. I close with reflections on legal normativity and the prospects for different forms of anti-positivism. (shrink)

Extraterritorial border controls prevent migrants from arriving at the territory of the state and effectively undermine rights to apply for asylum and protections against non-refoulement. As a result, a wealth of scholarship argues that external border controls are illegitimate exercises of state power. This paper challenges two versions of this argument, first, the claim that carrier-sanctions are illegitimate because they subject migrants to morally impermissible forms of coercion and, second, the claim that carrier-sanctions are illegitimate because they subject migrants to (...) illegitimate claims to authority.Against coercion-based accounts of legitimacy, this paper defends the view that while carrier-sanctions are coercive, the coerciveness of a policy is not relevant to its legitimacy. What is relevant is instead whether the authority claimed by the state is legitimate. Against authority-based accounts, this paper argues that states are unable to claim authority in the relevant sense over migrants that are present in the territories of other states.The paper concludes by suggesting that the charge that carrier-sanctions are illegitimate should shift towards the state that allows carriers to enforce these policies on their territories. No state has the legitimate authority to permit other states to pressure carriers to prevent migrants in need of protection from travelling. The state that introduces carrier-sanction legislation, on the other hand, is not exercising illegitimate authority though they may act contrary to demands of justice. (shrink)