Weekly Topic: Internal and External Morality

Lon Fuller suggests that good legal systems can be distinguished from bad ones by the amount of coherence and order that they promote among those who are subject to the law. Nevertheless, Fuller admits that for him this "assertion of a belief that may be naive [. . .] that coherence and goodness have more affinity than coherence and evil" remains unproven. Based on Fuller's account of the internal or procedural aspects of morality pertaining to law, is it possible to substantiate Fuller's assertion that "when men are compelled to explain and justify their decisions, the effect will generally be to pull those decisions toward goodness" or is Fuller's view of the ameliorating effects of internal morality fundamentally unprovable? Regardless of whether it can be proven or not, what consequences in legal scholarship do you see resulting from such a view and how do they differ from the positivist claim that legal scholarship must rest on the letter of the law, e.g. interpretation of penumbra legal disputes in light of the core solidified meaning of precedent?