Nicole Roughan, Authorities: Conflicts, Cooperation and Transnational Legal Theories, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, 288 pp, hb £63.00.
| Published date | 01 January 2016 |
| Date | 01 January 2016 |
| Author | Veronica Rodriguez‐Blanco |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.12173 |
Reviews
nor embedded in the fabric of the universe. That does not diminish its claim to
be regarded as a ‘theory’; or, at least, it cannot do so in absence of an argument
showing that ‘theories’ must always be general and naturalistic.
I have touched only upon some of the broader issues animating Causation in
Negligence, but I hope that is sufficient to show the interest and importance of
the book. Those less interested in these broader issues will find much to interest
them in the always adroit analysis of the case-law. It is a fine contribution to an
increasingly crowded field.
William Lucy∗
Nicole Roughan,Authorities: Conflicts, Cooperation and Transnational
Legal Theories, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, 288 pp, hb £63.00.
In her monograph Authorities, Nicole Roughan advances a thought-provoking
and interesting solution to the problem of plural legitimate authorities which
has previously been identified in numerous sources. The book discusses and
defends in detail the sound understanding of plural authorities and argues
that the two prominent theories of legitimate authority, ie the procedural and
the substantive theory, do not provide a satisfactory solution to the puzzle of
plural authorities. With great clarity, considering the difficulty of the subject,
Roughan argues that the substantive theory of legitimate authority, whose
central idea is that a legitimate authority is an author ity that enables citizens to
conform to right reason (see, eg, J. Raz, Practical Reason and Norms (Oxford:
OUP, 1999; originally published in 1975), The Morality of Freedom (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1986)), fails to provide the subjects of the authoritative rule
or directive with a way of identifying and ranking the legitimate authority
when there is more than one authority that has standing and legitimacy. On
the other hand, Roughan tells us, the procedural account, which relies on
processes such as consent, democratic deliberations and so on, also fails to
explain how multiple justified procedures that legitimise conflicting authorities
can be arranged into a hierarchy.
To remedy these difficulties the author proposes a hybrid account which
combines the key elements of both procedural and substantive approaches.
However, according to Roughan, the ‘conjunctive justification thesis’, which
is what she calls her hybrid approach, does not provide an adequate test for
identifying and ranking plural legitimate authorities. Therefore, she asserts, we
need to add the ‘relativity condition’ which is the idea that the legitimacy of
an authority is
mutually constitutive and mutually constraining between two persons or bodies
which prima facie have the standing of authority, but which cannot alone have
∗Law School, Durham University.
C2016 The Authors. The Modern Law Review C2016 The Moder n LawReview Limited.
(2016) 79(1) MLR 183–206 193
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