Friday, October 23, 2009
Coherence Is Not Necessarily Good
Fuller believes that good legal systems have more coherence and order from it's subjects, but I disagree. A good legal system should have good coherence and order, however it is not always the case. A horrible legal system can have good coherence and order if it is done through fear. People could only abide by the laws and regulations out of fear of persecution or death by the government. On the contrary, a bad legal system can also have great coherence. An example of this would be if there are no laws at all, then technically, everyone is abiding by the laws, but anarchy is not a good legal system. To accurately judge a legal system as good or bad, one must gauge more than just whether or not the society is coherent to it by following it. The legal system itself must be judged as to the fairness of the laws as well as the people's emotional reactions to following the laws, rather than if they blindly follow said laws like sheep.
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While I don't think anyone would deny that people can behave in a very predictable, law-abiding manner because they are fearful of punishment, I think Fuller's claim is that predictability and rule-following are not necessarily signs of goodness or coherence in a legal system.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't mind me changing your example about the possibility of lawlessness in the absence of laws, we could imagine a legal system with one law: everything is permitted. From the standpoint of that one law there is no possible inconsistency, since everything is by definition compatible with the law. Yet, you and Fuller agree that "anarchy is not a good legal system." Fuller, however, will go one step further and say because such a legal system violates the internal functional principles of morality that allow a legal system to guide behavior, it is no legal system at all. Specifically, because a law that permits everything cannot exert any guidance on human behavior, such a "law" exists in name only.
While purely nominal legal systems can create the appearance of perfect conformity with legal rules, this is neither lawfulness nor coherence in Fuller's sense because the appearance of conformity has no practical substance. Just because behavior technically falls within the category of "everything" does not mean that individuals' behaviors have anything to do with one another. In order to produce coherence among behaviors, rather than categorical homogeneity, Fuller will claim that law needs to make an appeal to conscience (external morality) and it needs to acknowledge certain internal constraints that make its rules practicable (internal morality).
I have to disagree with people following laws because of fear. I think people will follow the law but there can be a revolution if so many people disagree with it. I think people need to believe in the law also in order for it to be followed properly.
ReplyDeleteI agree that a good legal system will more that coherence to make it good, because like you said, it depends on what causes the coherence. I think fear could be a good or bad reason, depending on what the fear is of. Fear of punishment seems reasonable, but I am not sure the extent that fear should exist. I also think complete coherence may be a bad thing, because there needs to be some amount of pressure for laws to be changing as times are changing.
ReplyDeleteI agree that coherence is not necessarily a good thing because for example: a horrible legal system can have absolute coherence because it’s laws and very lax and there are not many of them. On the other hand a good legal system might not have as good coherence because it has more laws and they are more easily broken.
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