Invisible Author of Legal Authority
Law and Critique 7 (2):173-192 (1996)
Abstract
The thrust of this paper addresses how the notion of an author relates to the authority of a law. Drawing from the legal thought of Hobbes, Bentham, and John Austin, the Paper offers a sense of the author as a distinct institutional source of the state. The Paper then addresses the more difficult legal theories in this context: those of HLA Hart, Ronald Dworkin and Hans Kelsen. The clue to the latter as well as the earlier theorists is a presupposed inaccessible author or ghost. The presupposed ghost of the law is crucial to the binding character of a law.
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2018-05-10
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299 ( #18,276 of 57,106 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
60 ( #11,724 of 57,106 )
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