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Positivism and Conventionalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2015

Leslie Green
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Extract

All positivists hold that law has social foundations. According to H.L.A. Hart, for example, the legal system rests on customary social norms followed by judges and other officials: norms that recognize other norms as belonging to the system and norms that provide for the application and alteration of the system’s primary norms. Even if this view requires amendment, it is likely any plausible account of the nature of law needs some account of social norms. Finding a fully satisfactory one, however, has proved surprisingly difficult.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence , Volume 12 , Issue 1: Legal Theory , January 1999 , pp. 35 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

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References

1. H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law. rev. ed. by P.A. Bulloch & J. Raz (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).

2. Hans Kelsen, The Pure Theory of Law. trans. M. Knight (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967); for an early version of the theory, see Hans Kelsen, Introduction to the Problems of Legal Theory. trans. B.L. Paulson & S.L. Paulson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992 [f.p. 1934]), esp. 56–67.

3. Ronald Dworkin emphasizes the desirability of remaining “flexible” in our terminology in Law’s Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986) at 104–08.

4. For decisive criticism, see H.L. A. Hart, “Kelsen Visited,” and “Kelsen’s Doctrine of the Unity of Law,” both in his Essays in Jurisprudence and Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983); Joseph Raz, “Kelsen’s Theory of the Basic Norm” in his The Authority of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979). For a contrary view: J. W. Harris, Law and Legal Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979).

5. See my, “Law, Co-ordination and the Common Good” (1983) 3 Oxford J. Legal Stud. 299, “Authority and Convention” (1985) 35 Phil. Quarterly 329, and The Authority of the State (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990) at ch. 4.

6. Dworkin, supra note 3 at 37–44, 114–50.

7. Hart, supra note 1 at 55–61, 88–91.

8. I say a bit more about this distinction in “The Concept of Law Revisited” (1996) 94 Mich. L. Rev. 1687 at 1692–97.

9. See Margaret Gilbert, On Social Facts (London: Routledge, 1989) at 343.

10. See Andrei Marmor, “Legal Conventionalism” in (1998) 4 Legal Theory 509.

11. Hart, supra note 1 at 94–99, 100–10.

12. This paragraph draws on my discussion in “The Concept of Law Revisited,” supra note 8 at 1694–97.

13. Hart, supra note 1 at 267.

14. Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978) at 53–58.

15. Hart, supra note 1 at 256.

16. Ibid. at 266–67.

17. Tyler Burge effectively makes the point that people may be mistaken about the conventional status of regularities they follow in his “On Knowledge and Convention” (1975) 84 Phil. Rev. at 249–55.

18. Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963); David K. Lewis, Convention: A Philosophical Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974). For some typical statements of the thesis, see: Chaim Gans, “The Normativity of Law and its Co-ordinative Function” (1981) 16 Israel L. Rev. 333; John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980); Gerald Postema, “Coordination and Convention at the Foundations of Law” (1982) 11 J. Legal Stud. 165.

19. For example, John Finnis, “The Authority of Law in the Predicament of Contemporary Social Theory” (1984) 1 Notre Dame J. of Law, Ethics and Public Policy 115.

20. Green, Authority of the State, supra note 5 at 117.

21. Eerik Lagerspetz, A Conventionalist Theory of Institutions: 44 Acta Philosophica Fennica (Helsinki: Societas Philosophica Fennica, 1989) at 83. Reprinted as The Opposite Mirrors: An Essay on the Conventionalist Theory of Institutions (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1995).

22. See Joseph Raz, Practical Reason and Norms. rev. ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990) at 49–84.

23. Lagerspetz, supra note 21 at 82.

24. I think this is a misprision of Hart. See my “The Concept of Law Revisited,” supra note 8.

25. Lagerspetz, A Conventionalist Theory of Institutions, supra note 21 at 77.

26. John Finnis makes the same mistake: Natural Law and Natural Rights, supra note 19 at 232.

27. Lagerspetz, supra note 21 at 133.

28. Gerald Postema, “Coordination and Convention at the Foundations of Law,” supra note 18 at 188–94.

29. Lagerspetz, supra note 21 at 76.

30. Ibid. at 79.

31. I discuss functionalism in general in “The Functions of Law” (1998) 12 Cogito 123.

32. John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights. passim.

33. Lagerspetz, supra note 21 at 76–77.

34. So called after an early sexist example: a man and a woman want to go out together, but he wants to see the prizefight, she the ballet. R.D. Luce & H. Raiffa, Games and Decisions (New York: Wiley, 1957) at 90–91.

35. Green, Authority of the State, supra note 5 at 115.

36. G.J. Postema, “Bentham on the Public Character of Law” (1989) Utilitas 41 at 49.