BETWEEN AUTHORITY AND INTERPRETATION: ON THE THEORY OF LAW AND PRACTICAL REASON by JOSEPH RAZ
| Published date | 01 September 2010 |
| Date | 01 September 2010 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2010.00519.x |
| Author | TOM CAMPBELL |
BETWEEN AUTHORITY AND INTERPRETATION: ON THE THEORY OF
LAW AND PRACTICAL REASON by JOSEPH RAZ
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, 413 pp., £40.00)
Those who make up the considerable following of Professor Joseph Raz will
have read most of this most recent collection of brilliant yet sometimes
tantalizing essays, published between 1996 and 2006. The collection
includes one new essay, `Interpretation: Pluralism and Innovation'. Others
should consider taking the opportunity to become familiar with the central
themes of one of the world's most original and influential practical
philosophers. They will enjoy following the twists and turns of a masterly
theorist grappling with fundamental issues relating to law, morality, art and
their multiple inter-relationships, similarities, and differences. They may
emerge from the experience struggling to reach a clear understanding of the
grounding of Raz's conceptual claims and of how his conceptual analyses
relate to the nature of social phenomena of which they are the concepts, but
this should be viewed as part of the stimulating intellectual challenge
presented by the book.
Both groups of readers will benefit from a helpful and lucid introduction
in which the Raz outlines what he takes to be involved in giving `an account
of the general nature of law',
1
a theme which runs throughout the book. The
introduction discusses the division of the essays into three parts. Part I,
`Methodological Issues', contains two essays relating to the theory of law, in
which he discusses the explanatory nature of his chosen approach to legal
theory. Part II, `Law, Authority and Morality', contains five essays which
exemplify some of his core jurisprudential theses, with a further five essays
in Part III, `Interpretation', which deal with interpretation in art and literature
as well as in law, with an explanation of the relationship of legal inter-
pretation and legal authority, a topic on which Raz has made a major and
innovative contribution to the philosophy of law. An appendix reprints a
slightly tetchy critique of an article by the distinguished legal theorist Gerald
Postema which serves the useful purpose of identifying some interpretations
of his own work which Raz himself does not endorse.
Given the subtlety and carefully crafted interconnections woven together
in Raz's general theory of law, it is a risky venture to attempt a brief
summary, which I do not claim to do here. It needs to be emphasized just
how daring is Raz's goal of identifying features which law necessarily
possesses. To the social scientist, this goal may suggest that Raz is concerned
with law as a concept, rather than law as a social phenomenon. However, for
Raz, law is in large part constituted by the conceptual understandings of
those who operate within a legal system so that the nature of law is as much a
matter of what Raz talks of as their `self-understanding' as an account of
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1J.Raz, Between Authority And Interpretation (2009) 1.
ß2010 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2010 Cardiff University Law School
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