No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Why Law Matters by Alon Harel*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2016
Extract
Alon Harel’s Why Law Matters articulates a powerful and neglected approach for justifying legal institutions. Pushing back against the instrumentalist approach that dominates contemporary legal theory, he argues that legal institutions are not simply tools for realizing extrinsic values, but are themselves constitutive features of a just society. On this view, law is not an instrument for bringing about something that matters; rather, law itself matters and Harel elaborates a series of rich and insightful arguments to explain why. In this brief review, I will sketch the connection between Harel’s non-instrumental methodology and his account of (1) the nature of rights, (2) the distinctiveness of state authority, and (3) the justificatory basis of constitutional governance. I close with some critical comments about the non-instrumental justifications that Harel develops.
- Type
- Book Review
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 2016
References
1. See, for example, Waldron, Jeremy, “The Core of the Case against Judicial Review” (2006) 115:6CrossRefGoogle Scholar Yale LJ 1346 at 1386.
2. “The right-to-a-hearing justification for judicial review does not require review by courts or judges. It merely requires guaranteeing that grievances be examined in certain ways and by using certain procedures and modes of reasoning, but it tells us nothing of the identity of the institutions in charge of performing this task. Thus, in principle, the right to a hearing can be protected by any institution, including perhaps the legislature.”
3. Suggesting that rights “facilitate the exercise of autonomy”.