Law Commons^™

On Lawful Governments, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

What is the meaning of sentences of the form 'X is the lawful government of the country Y,' and what kinds of statements are normally -made by using them? Most answers to these questions can be classified as legalistic, moralistic, or compromise solutions. The gist of the legalistic approach is that the lawful government is that authorized by the positive law of the land. Critics of the legalistic approach point out that disagreement about the lawful government is not always solved when agreement is reached about the positive law of the land. For example, two people may disagree as to …

A Contextual Approach To Disobedience, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Edmund Burke once noted that the rebelliousness of colonial America was largely a consequence of the size and prominence of the legal profession, under whose influence the people "snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze." Today, however, most members of the legal profession take a much dimmer view of civil disobedience, although some do acknowledge its justification in special circumstances. Few who write on the subject recognize that in making judgments about the morality of disobedient acts the lawyer's perspective is limited.

Disputes over whether an illegal action is morally justified in a particular instance can be conceptually …