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Legitimacy is Not Authority

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Abstract

The two leading traditions of theorizing about democratic legitimacy are liberalism and deliberative democracy. Liberals typically claim that legitimacy consists in the consent of the governed, while deliberative democrats typically claim that legitimacy consists in the soundness of political procedures. Despite this difference, both traditions see the need for legitimacy as arising from the coercive enforcement of law and regard legitimacy as necessary for law to have normative authority. While I endorse the broad aims of these two traditions, I believe they both misunderstand the nature of legitimacy. In this essay I argue that the legitimacy of a law is neither necessary nor sufficient for its normative authority, and I argue further that the need for legitimacy in law arises regardless of whether the law is coercively enforced. I thus articulate a new understanding of the legitimacy and authority of law.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Northwestern University, Kresge Hall Room 2-335, 1880 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL, 60208-2214, USA

    Jon Garthoff

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  1. Jon Garthoff
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Correspondence to Jon Garthoff.

Additional information

I would like to thank Kenneth Baynes, James Bohman, Kyla Ebels Duggan, Samuel Fleischacker, Cristain Lafont, Emilie Prattico, Melissa Yates, Rachel Zuckert, Christopher Zurn, and an anonymous referee for their comments on earlier drafts of this essay. I am grateful also for feedback from the audience at the 2009 Critical Theory Round Table at Stony Brook University, including especially Seyla Benhabib, Jürgen Habermas, and Thomas McCarthy; and for feedback from the audience, including especially Andrew Koppelman, when I presented an earlier version of this essay to Northwestern University's School of Law.

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Garthoff, J. Legitimacy is Not Authority. Law and Philos 29, 669–694 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10982-010-9080-z

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