Joseph Raz claims that legal authority depends primarily on the social facts in which a particular legal system exists. In Western democracies, for example, legal institutions owe their authority partially to the fact that they are habitually obeyed. Because obedience is a social fact, Raz suggests, it does not matter whether individuals agree with or morally approve of legal rules. It doesn't even matter whether legal rules are genuinely beneficial to the individuals who obey. What matters for genuine legal authority is whether individuals recognize legal officials as having commanding authority over their behavior. While examples like the Milgram Experiment suggest that authority based on social recognition undermines individuals' abilities to question or otherwise change the rules accepted as having legal authority, Raz justifies his approach with two observations: on the one hand, such a view of authority is basic to our culture's experience of law. On the other hand, such a view is amazingly effective at resolving disputes.
What do you think of Raz's claim that legal authority is based upon the fact that it is socially recognized as a mediator among individual disputes? Are the concerns raised by the Milgram Experiment legitimate objections to Raz's view on conventional authority? Why should or shouldn't we accept the law's factual capacity to resolve the majority of disputes as reason enough to submit to its authority? Within Raz's theory of legal authority, how do changes to legal rules come about?
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