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AUTHORITY, LEGITIMACY, AND THE OBLIGATION TO OBEY THE LAW
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 July 2018
Abstract
According to the standard or traditional account, those who hold political authority legitimately have a right to rule that entails an obligation of obedience on the part of those who are subject to their authority. In recent decades, however, and in part in response to philosophical anarchism, a number of philosophers have challenged the standard account by reconceiving authority in ways that break or weaken the connection between political authority and obligation. This paper argues against these revisionist accounts in two ways: first, by pointing to defects in their conceptions of authority; and second, by sketching a fair-play approach to authority and political obligation that vindicates the standard account.
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Footnotes
I am grateful to David Lefkowitz, Justin Tosi, and the participants in a MANCEPT workshop on authority and legitimacy for comments that helped me to improve an earlier draft of this paper.
References
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2. That Simmons continues to adhere to the standard account is evident in his recent Boundaries of Authority (2016), at 62.
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7. Estlund, supra note 4, at 10, 41.
8. Shapiro, who traces this distinction to page 39 of Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom, takes a preemptive reason to be one that replaces other reasons and a peremptory reason to be one that excludes certain reasons from serious consideration. However, his discussion in Shapiro, supra note 3, at 406–408, tends to undercut the distinction.
9. I say “typically recognize” to allow for the exceptional cases in which the law acknowledges that disobedience is justified or excused, perhaps because of duress or misunderstanding.
10. The notable exception is Margaret Gilbert, who concerns herself with “genuine” rather than “moral” obligations. See Gilbert, Margaret, A Theory of Political Obligation (2006), esp. 21–23Google Scholar. For helpful surveys of the relevant literature, see Horton, John, Political Obligation (2d ed. 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Knowles, Dudley, Political Obligation: A Critical Introduction (2010)Google Scholar, and, more briefly, Dagger, Richard and Lefkowitz, David, Political Obligation, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (ed. Zalta, Edward N. 2014)Google Scholar, at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/political-obligation/, and Edmundson, William A., State of the Art: The Duty to Obey the Law, 10 Legal Theory 218 (2004)Google Scholar.
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34. As Perry acknowledges, supra note 26, at 42, one of the advocates of the authority-as-power position, Leslie Green, concedes that the distinction between rights/duties and powers/liabilities is a “somewhat technical point.” In the same passage, Green also observes that the “correlation between a right to rule and a duty to obey is distinctive only of the case of political authority.” Green, Leslie, The Authority of the State (1988), at 235Google Scholar.
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41. Id. at 229–230.
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43. Id. at 27–28; see also id. at 44–45.
44. It is perhaps worth noting that Hohfeld coined “no-right” for want of an adequate term already in use.
45. Copp, supra note 39, at 10–11 (emphasis in original).
46. Id. at 11 (emphasis in original).
47. To be fair, Copp does write here and elsewhere in his essay of a power “to put” people under a pro tanto duty. Perhaps he uses this language, rather than that of liability, in recognition of an inevitable connection between liability and duty.
48. Raz, supra note 5, at 24 (emphasis added).
49. Id. at 61.
50. Shapiro, supra note 3, esp. §§1, 3.4. But note that Shapiro refers to “paradoxes” of authority and autonomy rather than “challenges.”
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52. Raz, supra note 5, at 47 (emphasis in original).
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54. Raz, supra note 5, at 53 (emphasis in original). In The Problem of Authority, at 136–137, Raz says that the normal justification thesis (or condition) will be met when “the subject would better conform to reasons that apply to him anyway (that is, to reasons other than the directives of the authority) if he intends to be guided by the authority's directives than if he does not… .”
55. Raz, supra note 5, at 73.
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61. Christiano, Thomas, The Constitution of Equality: Democratic Authority and Its Limits (2008), at 233CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Christiano's exchange with Steven Wall on this point in 14 J. Pol. Phil. 85 (2006).
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66. For a more detailed defense of the fair-play approach to political obligation, see my Playing Fair: Political Obligation and the Problems of Punishment (2018), especially Chapters 3–5.
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69. A. John Simmons, Fair Play and Political Obligation: Twenty Years Later, in his Justification and Legitimacy, supra note 1.
70. See, inter alia, Besson, Samantha, The Morality of Conflict: Reasonable Disagreement and the Law (2005), at 486–490Google Scholar; Dagger, Richard, Civic Virtues: Rights, Citizenship, and Republican Liberalism (1997), at 72–78Google Scholar; Knowles, supra note 10, esp. 219–227.
71. Klosko, George, The Principle of Fairness and Political Obligation (1992), esp. 39–48Google Scholar.
72. Justin Tosi argues that there are two claim-rights involved here; in addition to the “state's claim right to obedience,” the members of the polity qua cooperative scheme hold a separate claim-right “to similar submission from recipients of the benefits they provide.” Tosi, Justin, A Fair Play Account of Legitimate Political Authority, 23 Legal Theory 55, 65 (2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
73. Copp, supra note 39, at 10–11.
74. I advance such a statement in Dagger, Richard, Playing Fair: Political Obligation and the Problems of Punishment (2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
75. Shapiro, supra note 3, at 432–433.
76. Id. at 433 (emphasis in original).
77. Id. at 435 (emphasis in original).
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