Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T00:06:53.189Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A POSITIVIST ROUTE FOR EXPLAINING HOW FACTS MAKE LAW

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 May 2012

David Plunkett
David Plunkett*
Affiliation:
Dartmouth [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In “How Facts Make Law” and other recent work, Mark Greenberg argues that legal positivists cannot develop a viable constitutive account of law that meets what he calls the “the rational-relation requirement.” He argues that this gives us reason to reject positivism in favor of antipositivism. In this paper, I argue that Greenberg is wrong: positivists can in fact develop a viable constitutive account of law that meets the rational-relation requirement. I make this argument in two stages. First, I offer an account of the rational-relation requirement. Second, I put forward a viable positivist account of law that I argue meets this requirement. The account that I propose is a version of Scott Shapiro's Planning Theory of Law. The version of Shapiro's account that I propose combines (1) the account of concepts and conceptual analysis put forward by David Chalmers and Frank Jackson with (2) the account of the concept legal institution (and its conceptual connections to the concept legal norm) that we get from a certain reading of Shapiro's Planning Theory. In addition to providing a compelling response to Greenberg's argument in “How Facts Make Law,” I argue that the explanation for why my response to Greenberg works underscores one of the central problems facing legal antipositivism: namely, its lack of a convincing account of the nature of legal institutions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Legal Theory , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , June 2012 , pp. 139 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Braddon-Mitchell, David. (2005) “The Subsumption of Reference.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56: 157–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bratman, Michael. (1987) Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason (Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Bratman, Michael. (1999) Faces of Intention: Selected Essays on Intention and Agency (Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chalmers, David J. (1996) The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Chalmers, David J. (2005) Revelation, Humility, and the Structure of the World. Available at http://consc.net/papers/revelation.ppt.Google Scholar
Chalmers, David J. (2006) “Two-Dimensional Semantics.” In Lepore, Ernie & Smith, Barry, eds., Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Language, 574–606 (Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Chalmers, David J. (2011) “Verbal Disputes.” Philosophical Review 120: 515–566.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chalmers, David J. (forthcoming) Constructing the World.Google Scholar
Chalmers, David J. and Jackson, Frank. (2001) “Conceptual Analysis and Reductive Explanation.” Philosophical Review 110: 315–360.Google Scholar
Darwall, Stephen L. (2006) The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability (Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Dasgupta, Shamik. (2011) On the Plurality of Grounds. Available at http://www.shamik.net/Research.html.Google Scholar
Davidson, D. (1984) “Radical Interpretation.” In Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Davidson, D.. (2001) “Belief and the Basis of Meaning.” In Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 2d ed. (Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. (1986) Law's Empire (Belknap Press).Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. (2011) Justice for Hedgehogs (Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Enoch, David. (2011) That's Just What It Is to Be Legally Valid: A Quick Refutation of Greenberg's “How Facts Make Law.” Available at http://law.huji.ac.il/upload/ThatsJustWhatItIs.doc.Google Scholar
Fine, Kit. (2011) Guide to Ground. On file with author.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibbard, Allan. (1990) Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment (Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Gibbard, Allan. (2003) Thinking How to Live (Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Greenberg, Mark. (2005) “A New Map of Theories of Mental Content: Constitutive Accounts and Normative Theories.” Nous: Philosophical Issues 15 (suppl.): 299–320.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Mark. (2006) “Hartian Positivism and Normative Facts: How Facts Make Law II.” In Hershovitz, Scott, ed., Exploring Law's Empire: The Jurisprudence of Ronald Dworkin, 265–290 (Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Greenberg, Mark. (2006) “How Facts Make Law.” In Hershovitz, Scott, ed. Exploring Law's Empire: The Jurisprudence of Ronald Dworkin, 225–264 (Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Greenberg, Mark. (2007) “On Practices and the Law.” In Villanueva, Enrique, ed., Law: Metaphysics, Meaning, and Objectivity: Social, Political, & Legal Philosophy, vol. 2, 95–125 (Rodopi Philosophical Studies).Google Scholar
Greenberg, Mark. (2007) “Reasons without Values?” In Villanueva, Enrique, ed., Law: Metaphysics, Meaning, and Objectivity: Social, Political, & Legal Philosophy, vol. 2, 133–143 (Rodopi Philosophical Studies).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenberg, Mark. (2011) “Legislation as Communication? Legal Interpretation and the Study of Linguistic Communication.” In Marmor, Andrei & Soames, Scott, eds., Philosophical Foundations of Language in the Law, 217–256 (Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Greenberg, Mark. (2011) “The Standard Picture and Its Discontents.” In Green, Leslie & Leiter, Brian, eds., Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Law, vol. 1, 39–106 (Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hart, H.L.A. (1994) The Concept of Law, 2d ed. (Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Jackson, Frank. (1998) From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis (Clarendon).Google Scholar
Jackson, Frank. (2001) “Precis of From Metaphysics to Ethics.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62: 617–624.Google Scholar
Jackson, Frank, and Pettit, Philip. (1996) “Moral Functionalism, Supervenience and Reductionism.” Philosophical Quarterly 46: 82–86.Google Scholar
Jenkins, Carrie S. (2011) “Explanation and Fundamentality.” In Hoeltje, Miguel et al. ., eds., Dependence. Basic Philosophical Concepts Series (Philosophia Verlag, forthcoming).Google ScholarPubMed
Kelsen, Hans. (1945) General Theory of Law and State (Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon. (1993) Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays (Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Kment, Boris. (2006) “Counterfactuals and Explanation.” Mind: A Quarterly Review of Philosophy 115: 261–302.Google Scholar
Leiter, Brian. (2007) Naturalizing Jurisprudence: Essays on American Legal Realism and Naturalism in Legal Philosophy (Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Leiter, Brian. (2009) “Explaining Theoretical Disagreement.” University of Chicago Law Review 76: 1215–1250.Google Scholar
Lewis, David. (1999) “Elusive Knowledge.” In DeRose, Keith & Warfield, Ted A., eds., Skepticism: A Contemporary Reader, 220–242 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Margolis, Eric and Laurence, Stephen. (1999) Concepts: Core Readings (MIT Press).Google Scholar
Moore, George Edward. (1903) Principia Ethica (Cambridge University Press); (1993) rev'd ed. with preface to 2d ed., Baldwin, T., ed. (Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Plunkett, David. (2011) “Expressivism, Representation, and the Nature of Conceptual Analysis.” Philosophical Studies 156: 15–31.Google Scholar
Plunkett, David and Sundell, Tim. (2011) Disagreement and the Semantics of Normative and Evaluative Terms. On file with author.Google Scholar
Quine, W.V.O. (1951) “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.” Philosophical Review 60: 20–43.Google Scholar
Raz, Joseph. (1985) “Authority and Justification.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 14: 3–29.Google Scholar
Raz, Joseph. (1999) Practical Reason and Norms (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Rosen, Gideon. (2010) “Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction.” In Hale, Bob & Hoffmann, Aviv, eds., Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology, 109–135 (Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scanlon, T.M. (2000) What We Owe to Each Other (Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Schaffer, Jonathan. (2009) “On What Grounds What.” In Chalmers, David J. & Manley, David, eds., Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, 347–383 (Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Schroeder, Mark. (2005) “Cudworth and Normative Explanations.” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 1: 1–27.Google Scholar
Schroeder, Mark. (2007) Slaves of the Passions (Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Shapiro, Scott. (2011) Legality (Harvard University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Michael. (1994) The Moral Problem (Blackwell).Google Scholar
Stavropoulos, Nicos. (2007) “Interpretivist Theories of Law.” In Villanueva, Enrique, ed., Law: Metaphysics, Meaning, and Objectivity: Social, Political, & Legal Philosophy, vol. 2, 3–19 (Rodopi Philosophical Studies).Google Scholar
Street, Sharon. (2008) “Constructivism about Reasons.” In Shafer-Landau, Russ, ed., Oxford Studies in Metaethics, vol. 3, 207–245 (Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szabo Gendler, Tamar and Hawthorne, John, eds. (2002) Conceivability and Possibility (Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Trogdon, Kelly. (2011) “An Introduction to Grounding.” In Hoeltje, Miguel et al. ., eds., Basic Philosophical Concepts (Philosophia Verlag, forthcoming). Available at http://web.me.com/kellytrogdon/KT/research_files/GO.pdf.Google Scholar