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This chapter considers the theses of Ronald Dworkin and HLA Hart. It explains (1) why Dworkin was wrong to think that Hart and others were concerned with the meaning of the word ‘law’; (2) why nevertheless if the semantic sting is a good argument against explanations of the meaning of the word ‘law’ it is also a good argument against any explanation of the concept of law, including that which Hart provides; and (3) why it is a bad argument. It then explains some mistakes that may have led Dworkin to endorse his third thesis about the nature of legal philosophy, namely the thesis that jurisprudence is a silent prologue to any legal decision.

This chapter explores the justified normativity thesis in Kelsen's legal philosophy, with particular attention to the works of Raz and Alexy. It raises doubts about whether anything as ambitious as justified normativity can be attributed to Kelsen. Some of these doubts are philosophical, others are prompted by a reading of Kelsen's texts. The philosophical doubts stem from the problems associated with transcendental arguments. That is, the appropriate argument on behalf of justified normativity in Kelsen's legal philosophy is a Kantian or Neokantian transcendental argument, which proves, however, to be unworkable. And textual support in Kelsen's writings is scant for the attribution to him of a justified — or contentual — normativity thesis. This cannot come as a surprise. From the very beginning, Kelsen was of the opinion that psychologism and naturalism, prominent in fin de siècle legal science on the European continent, were utterly wrong-headed. He sought to provide an alternative, and it took the form of a normativity thesis — what might be termed the nomological normativity thesis — that is altogether different from the justified normativity thesis. It does precisely the work that Kelsen would have it do, providing an alternative to psychologism and naturalism.

This chapter explores how Voluntarist jurists, who rejected Hard Natural Law, nonetheless developed their own natural law theory by fusing fact and value, but nonetheless upheld their voluntarist commitment to divine omnipotence. Soft Natural Law jurists relied on a theology of God's grace (tafaddul, fadl), and the authority of source-texts to fuse fact and value in nature, but contingently so. By fusing fact and value on the basis of divine grace (fadl), Soft Natural Law jurists allowed for the possibility that God may change His mind. Divine grace in Soft Natural Law permits the fusion of fact and value in nature, while at the same time rendering nature contingent in a way that Hard Natural Law theorists did not allow. The chapter provides an overview of different jurists' Soft Natural Law theories, illustrating both the core concepts of Soft Natural Law, as well as the different approaches to this type of natural law theory.

It has been frequently remarked that the works of Robert Alexy form a system. Mattias Kumm compares Alexy's work to Dworkin's and claims that ‘their works exhibit a holistic or system-based approach to the study of law’. Pavlakos praises Alexy for having developed ‘a systematic philosophy covering most of the key areas of legal philosophy’. With an eye to links between his main works, Robert Alexy himself has remarked that ‘the result may well be a system’. How this system should be explicated, however, has not been addressed in an effective way. This, essentially, is the main aim of this chapter. It begins with an overview of Alexy's main works. The overview reflects the three pillars of Alexy's work, along the lines of his three main monographs and the most important articles. These are Alexy's doctoral thesis, A Theory of Legal Argumentation; his ‘Habilitation’ thesis, A Theory of Constitutional Rights; and The Argument from Injustice. The relations and interconnections between and among the three pillars are identified. These first steps serve to collect and analyse the material and to prepare the way for the last step, which focuses on the system as a whole.

This concluding chapter summarizes the book by utilizing two ironies. The first irony is that despite the contested theological positions of Hard Natural Law and Soft Natural Law jurists, their philosophies of natural law nonetheless share much in common, namely the fusion of fact and value in nature. The second irony concerns the way in which the Soft Naturalist model of reasoned deliberation is utilized by modern Muslim reforms. Although Soft Natural Law theorists permitted a role for reasoned deliberation, they limited its scope by creating certain methods of analysis, in particular the maqasid model of legal reasoning. Modern Muslims seeking to reform Islamic law from within, however, grasp onto the maqasid model in order to enable and enhance the scope of reasoned deliberation in the law, despite the maqasid model's original design.

This chapter begins with a discussion of the universality of the theses of the general theory of law. It argues that all successful legal theories are parochial; that success can be obtained only through being parochial. It then focuses on the consequences of parochialism, law as the authoritative voice of a political community, and the instrumental and the non-instrumental views of law. The chapter also discusses the connection between authority and interpretation. First, it discusses the way in which the connection between law and authority leads to a dual interest in the study of law: an interest in the process leading to the authoritative laying down or endorsement of a standard, and an interest in how the fact that a standard has authoritatively been laid down affects its standing. Second, it considers consider the main way in which the fact that law is authoritative affects its interpretation. Finally, it considers the way in which the authoritative nature of law makes interpretation central to legal reasoning.

This chapter provides an analytic overview of the opponents of Hard Natural Law, whose critique was launched from a Voluntarist perspective. Voluntarist jurists considered Shari'a values to be products of a Voluntarist divine will. Without a scriptural basis (shar'), they argued, there can be no Shari'a valuation or divine obligation. For them, obligation implies punishment and reward, praise and blame – all of which are the products of God's express will. While human reason can make evaluative judgments, their authority is limited by the contingencies and fallibilities of the jurist. To suggest that such judgments reflect a divine intent is tantamount to holding God hostage to human reasoning, and thus undermines the Voluntarists' theological commitment to God's omnipotence.

This chapter is a third version — this time for a Chinese readership — of a brief (sixteen-page) encyclopedia-style overview of the history of Western legal philosophy from the pre-Socratics to Hart, Dworkin, Posner, Unger, and others, focusing on showing the bearing of that history on contemporary problems in the field. Causation, legal personality, and legal interpretation are selected for illustration, but the survey concentrates on the wider issues of method that determine the content and explanatory power of rival approaches. One conclusion along the way is that Aquinas's conception of law's positivity is superior to Hart's and the various legal ‘positivisms’ are a distraction.

This chapter discusses Hans Kelsen's influential attempt to present a “pure” theory of law, and the reasons for its failure. It tries to show that Kelsen's pure theory of law is the most striking—and in many ways, still the most interesting—defense of a complete detachment view, both in method and substance. It argues that the main reason for the failure of this project is that it identified the detachment view with antireductionism. Kelsen thought that a theory about the nature of law should avoid any reduction of legal facts to facts of any other type, either social or moral.

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the concept of legal validity and the three main schools of thought have emerged in response to the general questions concerning the conditions of legal validity. It then sets out the two main themes that inform the main argument of this book: the relations between the factual and the normative and between substance and method. The book shows that the debates about the possibility of detachment in both substance and method, and the subtle relations between them, have informed a great deal of the theorizing in legal philosophy during the last century. It shows that a substantial part of these debates centers on the question of the possibility of reduction. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

H. L. A. Hart characterized his theory about the nature of law as “descriptive and morally neutral.” Like previous legal positivists such as John Austin and Hans Kelsen, he thought that a philosophical account of the nature of law should strive to avoid moralizing of any kind, and should aim at an explanation of the nature of law that is quite general in its application—one that explains what law, in general, is. However, many contemporary legal philosophers claim that a theory about the nature of law, such as Hart's legal positivism, cannot be detached from moral and political views about law's merits. This chapter argues that Hart was quite right, and that it is both possible and theoretically desirable to detach a philosophical account of the nature of law from moral and political views about law's merit.

This introductory chapter develops the book's central problem—the problem of legal authority—and outlines the book's arguments in response to it. It introduces the apparent tension between morality and law by juxtaposing John Adams's ideal of “a government of laws and not of men” against Aristotle's prescription that the “best man” rather than the “best law” should rule. As Aristotle recognized, laws inevitably have exceptions—situations in which the morally best thing to do is something other than what the law commands. Why should the “best men” not feel free to ignore the law in such circumstances? The chapter foreshadows the book's dispute-resolution framework for answering that question and situates the problem of legal authority in the context of several seemingly diverse fields of study: analytic legal philosophy, democratic political theory, theory of adjudication, and public-law theory.