Law’s Autonomy and Moral Reason

This paper intends to set out an argument to Legal Idealism and a thesis that holds law and morality as <i>necessarily</i> connected. My focus is on deconstructing the Positivist argument to the Autonomy Thesis and beginning to reconstruct it through the application of morality to law&#8217;s autonomous authority. My aim, ultimately, is to demonstrate how, through the <i>concept</i> of law, practical reason might explain the related (and overlapping) notions of legitimacy, authority, and the obligation to obey through the <i>necessary</i> connection of law and morality. That is, I intend to demonstrate that morality both survives and remains identifiable (transparently) following the process of metamorphosis into <i>institutionalised</i> practical reasoning. If this is so, the authority of and obligation to law is simultaneously a form of morally rational obligation. In the response to the Positivist argument that moral values are incommensurate, I will show that this commensurability can be determined &#8216;artificially&#8217; by a system of institutionalised reasoning (i.e., the law); this is to say, if I can show that the Legal Positivist argument is left incomplete without some explanation of moral values underpinning it, I need not to show that a specific, defensible moral truth or principle is required, but that an artificial weighting of abstract moral principles is sufficient

Abstract licence: CC BY

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