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Political Authority And Political Obligation, Stephen R. Perry
Political Authority And Political Obligation, Stephen R. Perry
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Legitimate political authority is often said to involve a “right to rule,” which is most plausibly understood as a Hohfeldian moral power on the part of the state to impose obligations on its subjects (or otherwise to change their normative situation). Many writers have taken the state’s moral power (if and when it exists) to be a correlate, in some sense, of an obligation on the part of the state’s subjects to obey its directives. Thus legitimate political authority is said to entail a general obligation to obey the law, and a general obligation to obey the law is said …
Alexander's Genius, Mitchell N. Berman
Alexander's Genius, Mitchell N. Berman
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Larry Alexander is one of the most creative, penetrating, and wide-ranging legal theorists working today. This short essay, prepared as a tribute for a special issue of the APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Law, aims to convey a flavor of his work by introducing, and causing some trouble for, just a few of his more heterodox and provocative positions. The principal critical target of the essay is Alexander’s contention (a contention that he has pressed both alone and with Saikrishna Prakash) that extreme partisan gerrymandering does not violate the U.S. Constitution. The most persuasive grounding for the unconstitutionality of (extreme) …