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Osgoode Hall Law School of York University
Legal positivism, natural law, naturalism, naturalistic jurisprudence, moral psychology
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The Possibility Of Naturalistic Jurisprudence: Legal Positivism And Natural Law Theory Revisited, Dan Priel
The Possibility Of Naturalistic Jurisprudence: Legal Positivism And Natural Law Theory Revisited, Dan Priel
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Contemporary legal philosophy is predominantly anti-naturalistic. This is true of natural law theory, but also, more surprisingly, of legal positivism. Several prominent legal philosophers have in fact argued that the kind of questions that legal philosophers are interested in cannot be naturalized, such that a naturalistic legal philosophy is something of a contradiction in terms. Against the dominant view I argue that there are arguable naturalistic versions of both legal positivism and natural law. Much of the essay is dedicated to showing that such views are possible: I identify naturalistic versions of a “natural law” view, a “positivist” view, as …