Abstract
The revival of interest in contractarian theories of morals and politics may encourage us to enquire into the prospects for a contractarian theory of law. Such a theory would be normative, aiming, not at the best explanation or justification of our actual legal practices and institutions, but rather at a rational reconstruction of those practices and institutions from the perspective of agreement among maximizing individuals. It would offer a secular and instrumental rationale for law that requires no dubious assumptions about the objectivity of values or the existence of moral order in the universe. Of course, such a reconstruction might fail, leading to a skeptical conclusion. Rational individuals, in a position to decide on their terms of interaction, might reject any structure that we should recognize as a legal framework. But this must seem unlikely. We may compare law with morality, recognizing that both have arisen in a framework of teleological and theological understandings that are themselves no longer plausible to us, without supposing that either must therefore be wanting from the perspective of rational agreement.