Does Law Necessarily Claim Authority?

Kenneth Einar Himma

Like all positivists, Joseph Raz believes there can be legal systems that do not include moral norms in the criteria that determine whether a standard is legally valid (i.e., law). But Raz denies there can be legal systems that do include moral norms in the criteria of validity because he believes the existence of such is inconsistent with the conceptual truth that law claims legitimate authority (the Authority Thesis). On Raz's view, a legal system cannot be capable of legitimate authority unless the content of its legal norms can be identified without recourse to the dependent reasons that justify them. Since the content of moral criteria of validity cannot be identified without such recourse, there cannot be legal systems with moral criteria of validity. In this essay, I will argue that the Authority Thesis is false.