Law Commons^™

The Improbability Of Positivism, Andrew Tutt

Pace Law Review

Ronald Dworkin’s contributions to legal philosophy have been subject to severe criticism in recent years. Other legal philosophers call his arguments “deflected or discredited,” laced with “philosophical confusions,” and “deeply embedded” mistakes. As Brian Leiter writes, “[t]he only good news in the story about Dworkin’s impact on law and philosophy is that most of the field declined to follow the Dworkinian path . . . .”

This Article endeavors to show that, far from an effort beset with primitive errors, Dworkin’s challenge to legal positivism in the opening pages of his seminal work was neither misguided nor trivial. Rather, Dworkin’s …

Legal Ethics As A Moral Idea: A Theory Of Philosophical Legal Ethics Based On The Work Of Lon Fuller, Emanuel Raul Tucsa

LLM Theses

The legal philosophy of Lon Fuller, both in his idea of internal morality and in his theory of legal interpretation, is particularly useful for the purpose of making sense of the relationship between law and morality vis-à-vis the legal profession. Legal ethicists have recently developed accounts of legal ethics that are based on jurisprudential theories. These include the exclusive positivist theory of Tim Dare, the inclusive positivist approach of Bradley Wendel, and the substantive contextual judgment view of William Simon. Additionally, David Luban has proposed and evaluated an insightful interpretation of Fuller’s legal philosophy.

In this paper, I will argue …

The Model Of Plans And The Prospects For Positivism, Scott Hershovitz

Reviews

In Legality, Scott Shapiro builds his case for legal positivism on a simple premise: laws are plans. Recognition of that fact leads to legal positivism, Shapiro says, because the content of a plan is fixed by social facts. In this essay, I argue that Shapiro’s case for legal positivism fails. Moreover, I argue that we can learn important lessons about the prospects for positivism by attending to the ways in the argument fails. As I show, the flaws in Shapiro’s argument reveal structural problems with a family of prominent positivist views, including the one defended by Joseph Raz.

Legality, Morality, Duality, Joshua P. Davis

Utah Law Review

This Article proposes legal dualism as a novel resolution to one of the central debates in jurisprudence—that between natural law and legal positivism. It holds that the nature of law varies with the purpose for which it is being interpreted. Natural law provides the best account of the law when it serves as a source of moral guidance and legal positivism provides the best account of the law when it does not.