Legal institutions and our moral reasons
<p>State institutions, such as courts and legislatures, engage in certain practices. They adopt statutes, decide disputes, and so on. These legal practices often affect our moral world. Can we understand our legal practices just by looking to their moral effects? In this thesis, I argue that w...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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2024
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| _version_ | 1826313687836655616 |
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| author | Van wees, N |
| author2 | Stavropoulos, N |
| author_facet | Stavropoulos, N Van wees, N |
| author_sort | Van wees, N |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | <p>State institutions, such as courts and legislatures, engage in certain practices. They adopt statutes, decide disputes, and so on. These legal practices often affect our moral world. Can we understand our legal practices just by looking to their moral effects? In this thesis, I argue that we can. </p>
<p>Moral reasons are objective things which depend on our circumstances. State institutions can change our reasons by changing our circumstances. Mark Greenberg and Ronald Dworkin have used these facts to build a theory of law, but I find their approaches unconvincing. A better approach is eliminativist in nature: we can explain our legal practices in purely moral terms, without trying to answer the question, ‘What is law?’</p>
<p>Our legal practices are best seen as practices of governance. Those practices change officials’ moral reasons, and this guides and constrains them to use public power in certain ways. Legal practices therefore allow institutions to control how public power is used, and this allows the state to govern.</p>
<p>This account explains our legal practices in moral terms. The practice of statutory interpretation, for example, is just an exercise in moral reasoning. Similarly, the practice of precedent reflects moral demands on judges. We do not need to look beyond moral reasons to explain these practices: we do not need to refer to distinctly ‘legal’ reasons, for example, or reasons of prudence or instrumental rationality.</p>
<p>Because our legal practices are practices of governance, they are generally effective at changing the moral reasons of officials. They are not as effective at changing the moral reasons of citizens, however. I therefore place officials at the centre of my account of our legal practices. This is contrary to the usual approach in jurisprudence, which favours the perspective of ordinary citizens. I discuss this contrast, and some related objections, in the final three chapters.</p> |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-25T04:20:33Z |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oxford-uuid:710c3428-43fa-4346-a326-1ec34c5438ae |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-25T04:20:33Z |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:710c3428-43fa-4346-a326-1ec34c5438ae2024-08-01T17:46:34ZLegal institutions and our moral reasonsThesishttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_db06uuid:710c3428-43fa-4346-a326-1ec34c5438aeJurisprudenceEnglishHyrax Deposit2024Van wees, NStavropoulos, NDindjer, H<p>State institutions, such as courts and legislatures, engage in certain practices. They adopt statutes, decide disputes, and so on. These legal practices often affect our moral world. Can we understand our legal practices just by looking to their moral effects? In this thesis, I argue that we can. </p> <p>Moral reasons are objective things which depend on our circumstances. State institutions can change our reasons by changing our circumstances. Mark Greenberg and Ronald Dworkin have used these facts to build a theory of law, but I find their approaches unconvincing. A better approach is eliminativist in nature: we can explain our legal practices in purely moral terms, without trying to answer the question, ‘What is law?’</p> <p>Our legal practices are best seen as practices of governance. Those practices change officials’ moral reasons, and this guides and constrains them to use public power in certain ways. Legal practices therefore allow institutions to control how public power is used, and this allows the state to govern.</p> <p>This account explains our legal practices in moral terms. The practice of statutory interpretation, for example, is just an exercise in moral reasoning. Similarly, the practice of precedent reflects moral demands on judges. We do not need to look beyond moral reasons to explain these practices: we do not need to refer to distinctly ‘legal’ reasons, for example, or reasons of prudence or instrumental rationality.</p> <p>Because our legal practices are practices of governance, they are generally effective at changing the moral reasons of officials. They are not as effective at changing the moral reasons of citizens, however. I therefore place officials at the centre of my account of our legal practices. This is contrary to the usual approach in jurisprudence, which favours the perspective of ordinary citizens. I discuss this contrast, and some related objections, in the final three chapters.</p> |
| spellingShingle | Jurisprudence Van wees, N Legal institutions and our moral reasons |
| title | Legal institutions and our moral reasons |
| title_full | Legal institutions and our moral reasons |
| title_fullStr | Legal institutions and our moral reasons |
| title_full_unstemmed | Legal institutions and our moral reasons |
| title_short | Legal institutions and our moral reasons |
| title_sort | legal institutions and our moral reasons |
| topic | Jurisprudence |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT vanweesn legalinstitutionsandourmoralreasons |