This book investigates one of the oldest questions of legal philosophy---the relationship between law and legitimacy. It analyses the legal theories of three eminent public lawyers of the Weimar era, Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen, and Hermann Heller. Their theories addressed the problems of legal and political order in a crisis-ridden modern society and so they remain highly relevant to contemporary debates about legal order in the age of pluralism. Schmitt, the philosopher of German fascism, has recently received much attention. Kelsen (...) is well-known as one of the main exponents of the philosophy of legal positivism. Heller is virtually unknown outside Germany. Dyzenhaus exposes the dangers of Schmitt's legal philosophy by situating it in the legal context of constitutional crisis to which he responded. He also points out the severs inadequacies of Kelsen's legal positivism. In a wide-ranging account of the predicaments of contemporary legal and political philosophy, Heller's position is argued to be the most promising of the three. (shrink)

Legal positivism dominates in the debate between it and natural law, but close attention to the work of Thomas Hobbes -- the "founder" of the positivist tradition -- reveals a version of anti-positivism with the potential to change the contours of that debate. Hobbes's account of law ties law to legitimacy through the legal constraints of the rule of law. Legal order is essential to maintaining the order of civil society; and the institutions of legal order are structured in such (...) a way that government in accordance with the rule of law is intrinsically legitimate. I focus on Hobbes's neglected catalogue of the laws of nature. Only the first group gets much attention. Its function is to facilitate exit from the state of nature, an exit which Hobbes seems to make impossible. The second group sets out the moral psychology of both legislators and subjects necessary to sustain a properly functioning legal order. The third sets out the formal institutional requirements of such an order. The second and third groups show Hobbes not concerned with solving an insoluble problem of exit from the state of nature but with the construction of legitimate order. Because a sovereign is by definition one who governs through law, Hobbes's absolutism is constrained. Government in accordance with the rule of law is government subject to the moral constraints of the institutions of legal order. (shrink)

The idea of a wicked legal system, one whose laws have been made the instrument of a repugnant moral ideology, continues to play an important part in philosophical debates about the nature of law and law's claim to moral authority. It seems to offer support for the argument of legal positivists, who insist on a clear conceptual distinction between legal requirements, deriving from social sources, and moral requirements. Does the existence of wicked legal systems present an insurmountable obstacle to critics (...) of positivism who reject the importance of that distinction?The abstract debates of legal philosophers can seem far removed from the practical application of law in the business of deciding cases. This book argues that theoretical disagreement matters profoundly to the practice of law, and analyses the abstract debates of legal philosophy through a detailed study of judicial interpretations in apartheid South Africa - a model 'wicked legal system'. The case study shows that particular conceptions of law and of the rule of law determined the reasoning both of judges whose decisions supported official policy and of judges whose decisions resisted that policy.The first edition of this book was published in 1991. Since then South Africa has transformed, and the major debates in legal theory have shifted from analysing the concept of law itself to analysing the concept of legality and the value of the rule of law. For this substantially revised new edition, the author addresses the transformation of South Africa since the end of Apartheid, and the shift in focus of legal philosophy. He also examines the emergence of counter-terrorism security laws, and the arguments surrounding their conformity to the rule of law. The book offers an invaluable guide to understanding the abstract debates of legal theory, and their importance in legal practice. (shrink)

Perhaps the most influential passage on the rule of law in international law comes from chapter 13 of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. In the course of describing the miserable condition of mankind in the state of nature, Hobbes remarks to readers who might be skeptical that such a state ever existed that they need only look to international relations—the relations between independent states—to observe one: But though there had never been any time, wherein particular men were in a condition of warre (...) one against another; yet in all times, Kings, and Persons of Soveraigne authority, because of their Independency, are in continuall jealousies, and in the state and posture of Gladiators; having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed on one another; that is, their Forts, Garrisons, and Guns upon the Frontiers of their Kingdomes; and continuall Spyes upon their neighbours; which is a posture of War. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt's critique of liberalism portrays liberalism as a supple political ideology, one which moves constantly between the horns of several connected dilemmas. In particular, liberalism cannot decide whether it is based on substantive political values or is neutral or substanceless. John Rawls's 'political liberalism' is argued to exemplify-and to fall prey to-Schmitt's critique. Rawls tries to find a shallow justification for liberalism, one which claims no truth for itself and is thus neutral between many different ideologies. But his justification, (...) as he is forced to admit, presupposes the substantive commitments he wants to avoid. Hence, liberalism has to move beyond Rawls and accept its place within democracy. (shrink)

Legal positivism dominates in the debate between it and natural law, but close attention to the work of Thomas Hobbes -- the "founder" of the positivist tradition -- reveals a version of anti-positivism with the potential to change the contours of that debate. Hobbes's account of law ties law to legitimacy through the legal constraints of the rule of law. Legal order is essential to maintaining the order of civil society; and the institutions of legal order are structured in such (...) a way that government in accordance with the rule of law is intrinsically legitimate. I focus on Hobbes's neglected catalogue of the laws of nature. Only the first group gets much attention. Its function is to facilitate exit from the state of nature, an exit which Hobbes seems to make impossible. The second group sets out the moral psychology of both legislators and subjects necessary to sustain a properly functioning legal order. The third sets out the formal institutional requirements of such an order. The second and third groups show Hobbes not concerned with solving an insoluble problem of exit from the state of nature but with the construction of legitimate order. Because a sovereign is by definition one who governs through law, Hobbes's absolutism is constrained. Government in accordance with the rule of law is government subject to the moral constraints of the institutions of legal order. (shrink)

The author argues that Schauer's understanding of appropriate empiricism and relatedly what he wishes to take from the positivist classics might have an even more reductive impact on legal philosophical inquiry than the legal positivist quest to confine such inquiry to a search for necessary and sufficient conditions. The argument is based on the example of the legal order of the Arab territories occupied by Israel. In the author's view, this legal order is very close to what Schauer regards as (...) the normal case of a properly functioning legal order and in its closeness one can discern the flaws in his argument. (shrink)

Dyzenhaus deals with the urgent question of how governments should respond to emergencies and terrorism by exploring the idea that there is an unwritten constitution of law, exemplified in the common law constitution of Commonwealth countries. He looks mainly to cases decided in the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada to demonstrate that even in the absence of an entrenched bill of rights, the law provides a moral resource that can inform a rule-of-law project capable of responding to situations which place (...) legal and political order under great stress. Those cases are discussed against a backdrop of recent writing and judicial decisions in the United States of America in order to show that the issues are not confined to the Commonwealth. The author argues that the rule-of-law project is one in which judges play an important role, but which also requires the participation of the legislature and the executive. (shrink)

This paper is a critical notice of Philip Pettit's On the People's Terms: A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy. Pettit argues that only Republicanism can respond appropriately to the ‘evil of subjection to another's will – particularly in important areas of personal choice’ because its ideal of liberty – freedom as non-domination – both captures better than liberalism our commitment to individual liberty and explains better our commitment to the legitimacy of democratic decision-making than standard democrat accounts. If this (...) argument succeeds, it demonstrates that there is no real tension between the liberal thought that justice provides a standard for evaluating public decisions independent of the fact that they are taken democratically and the democratic thought that the fact that a decision is democratic suffices to make it legitimate. I argue, however, that Pettit finds himself caught between two contradictory positions: a version of Isaiah Berlin's negative concept of liberty and a positive liberty account of democracy. And I show that his attempt to resolve the tension fails because it requires him to embrace the positive liberty account he is committed to rejecting. (shrink)

Essays devoted to the legal thought of Thomas Hobbes, arguably the greatest political philosopher to write in English.

Law as Politics thematically organises in one volume the varying engagements and confrontations with Schmitt's work and allows scholars to acknowledge-and ...

I argue that attention to Austin helps us to appreciate that there are significant continuities between his legal theory and that of contemporary positivists; hence, to the extent that Austin’s theory has defects, these are reproduced in the work of contemporary legal positivism. An historical perspective on contemporary philosophy of law thus permits one to appreciate that the basic divide in legal theory is between a tradition whose basic intuition is that law is answerable to a moral ideal of legality (...) and the positivist tradition that sees law as the transmitter of political judgment. For the former, the rule of law tradition, the basic problem for philosophy of law is to explain the distinction between the rule of law and the arbitrary rule of men. For the latter, the rule by law tradition, the basic problem is to explain how law can effectively transmit the judgments made political elites. The rule by law tradition encounters severe difficulties in making sense of the idea of government according to law, difficulties which reach their height once legal positivists accept, following Hart, that philosophy of law has to understand law as a normative phenomenon, which in turns requires taking seriously the internal point of view of legal officials. (shrink)

Eyal Benvenisti has sought to provide an optimistic account of international law through reconceptualizing the idea of sovereignty as a kind of trusteeship for humanity. He thus sketches a welcome antidote to trends in recent work in public law including public international law that claim that international law is no more than a cloak for economic and political interests, so that all that matters is which powerful actor gets to decide. In this Article, I approach his position through a discussion (...) of the debate in Weimar about sovereignty between Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen and Hermann Heller. I try to show that Heller’s almost unknown legal theory might be helpful to Benvenisti’s position. Heller shared with Schmitt the idea that sovereignty had to have a central role in legal theory and that its role includes a place for a final legal decision. Indeed, much more than Schmitt, Heller regarded all accounts of sovereignty as inherently political. However, in a manner closer to the spirit of Kelsen’s enterprise than to Schmitt’s, he wished to emphasize that the ultimate decider - the sovereign decision unit of the political order of liberal democracy - is entirely legally constituted. Moreover, Heller argued that fundamental principles of legality condition the exercise of a sovereign power in a way that explains the specific legitimacy of legality and which might supply the link between sovereignty and ideas such as trusteeship and humanity. (shrink)

Oakeshott, Hayek and Schmitt are associated with a conservative reaction to the 'progressive' forces of the twentieth century. Each was an acute analyst of the juristic form of the modern state and the relationship of that form to the idea of liberty under a system of public, general law. Hayek had the highest regard for Schmitt's understanding of the rule of law state despite Schmitt's hostility to it, and he owed the distinction he drew in his own work between a (...) purpose-governed form of state and a law-governed form to Oakeshott. However, the three have until now rarely been considered together, something which will be ever more apparent as political theorists, lawyers and theorists of international relations turn to the foundational texts of twentieth-century thought at a time when debate about liberal democratic theory might appear to have run out of steam. (shrink)

In Legality, Scott Shapiro – a leading legal positivist – analyses the problem of a wicked legal system in a way that brings him close to natural law positions. For he argues that a wicked legal system is botched as a legal system and I show that such an argument entails a prior argument that there is some set of standards or criteria internal to law which are both moral and legal. As a result, the more successful a legal order (...) is legally speaking, the better the moral quality of its law, and the more it is a failure morally speaking, the worse the legal quality of its law. It is such moral features of law that Shapiro concedes make it plausible to account for law’s claim to justified authority over its subjects. However, Shapiro cannot, as a legal positivist, accept this entailment. His book thus brings to the surface and illuminates a central dilemma for legal positivism. If legal positivists wish to account for the authority of law they have to abandon legal positivism’s denial that law has such moral features. If they do not, they should revive a form of legal positivism that specifically abjures any claim to account for law’s normative nature. (shrink)

Constitutional law has been and remains an area of intense philosophical interest, and yet the debate has taken place in a variety of different fields with very little to connect them. In a collection of essays bringing together scholars from several constitutional systems and disciplines, Philosophical Foundations of Constitutional Law unites the debate in a study of the philosophical issues at the very foundations of the idea of a constitution: why one might be necessary; what problems it must address; what (...) problems constitutions usually address; and some of the issues raised by the administration of a constitutional regime. Although these issues of institutional design are of abiding importance, many of them have taken on new significance in the last few years as law-makers have been forced to return to first principles in order to justify novel practices and arrangements in their constitutional orders. Thus, questions of constitutional 'revolutions,' challenges to the demands of the rule of law, and the separation of powers have taken on new and pressing importance. The essays in this volume address these questions, filling the gap in the philosophical analysis of constitutional law. The volume will provoke specialists in philosophy, politics, and law to develop new philosophically grounded analyses of constitutional law, and will be a valuable resource for graduate students in law, politics and philosophy. (shrink)

I argue that Schmitt was a faux jurist and that is important to understand ‘Schmittean’ logic. This is a logic which aims to undermine democracy and the rule of law which is not unique to Schmitt and is at play in our contemporary world.

This collection explores some of the many ways in which constitutional orders engage with, and are shaped by, their exteriors. Constitutional and legal theory often marginalize 'foreign' elements, such as norms originating in other legal systems, the movement of individuals across borders, or the application of domestic law to foreign affairs. In The Double-Facing Constitution, these instances of boundary crossing lie at the heart of an alternative understanding of constitutions as permeable membranes, through which norms can and sometimes must travel. (...) Constitutional orders are facing both inwards and outwards - and the outside world influences their interiors just as much as their internal orders help shape their surroundings. Different essays discuss the theoretical and historical foundations of this view, and its contemporary relevance for areas as diverse as migration law, the conflict of laws, and foreign relations law. (shrink)

The mark of ‘the political’, according to Bernard Williams, lies in a society finding an answer to the ‘first political question’—the ‘Hobbesian’ question of how to secure ‘order, protection, safety, trust, and the conditions of cooperation’. It is first because ‘solving it is the condition of solving, indeed posing, any others’. Williams also argues that a political order differs from an ‘unmediated coercive’ order in that it seeks to satisfy the ‘Basic Legitimation Demand’ that every legitimate state must satisfy if (...) it is to show that it wields authority over those subject to its rule. To meet that demand the state ‘has to be able to offer a justification of its power to each subject whom by its own lights it can rightfully coerce under its laws and institutions’. My paper argues that this set of issues is the central concern of legal theory and that, suprisingly, it is resources in the legal positivist theories of Hans Kelsen, H. L. A. Hart and Joseph Raz that can help us to see how a political order has to be constituted as a legal order before it becomes capable of answering the BLD. The argument is that the idea of acceptance in positivist legal theory imports the main components of the social contract tradition, which are necessary if law is to be understood as a matter of authority. Once imported, the central question for philosophy of law becomes the legal subject’s question, ‘But how can that be law for me?’. (shrink)

This article examines the work of Martin Loughlin, a prominent public lawyer who works in the leftwing tradition of political and legal theory, often associated with the London School of Economics and Political Science. It argues that tensions in Loughlin’s work exemplify certain trends within the left, the result of the left having lost faith in its positive political programme, one which was supposed to be delivered by Parliament. What remains once this faith is lost is a traditional hostility to (...) liberalism and judicial review in combination with a sense that the realm of politics—the political—is valuable. This combination explains the turn taken by certain leftwing theorists to Carl Schmitt’s authoritarian understanding of politics and to a kind of romanticism about tradition. Given the risks inherent in this turn, would be better for the left both to return to its roots in a positive programme. This move would require the left to engage properly in the contemporary debate about the normativity of law. (shrink)