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Reasons of Law: Dworkin on the Legal Decision

Anthony R. Reeves* Department of Philosophy Binghamton University, State University of New York areeves@binghamton.edu

Forthcoming in Jurisprudence (January 2016)

Available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20403313.2015.1082818

In a 1965 commentary, Ronald Dworkin identified the basic question of jurisprudence as: “What,

in general, is a good reason for a decision by a court of law?”1 I argue that, over the course of

his career, Dworkin gave an essentially sound answer to this question. In fact, he gave a correct

answer to a broader question: ‘What is a good reason for a legal decision, generally?’ For

judges, officials of executive and administrative agencies, lawyers, non-governmental

organizations, and ordinary subjects acting in the variety of legal contexts, Dworkin identified

the proper basis for a legal decision, and its implications for the form of well-conducted legal

reasoning. Showing this might be thought outside the purview of a single paper given the size of

Dworkin’s corpus, and the vast critical literature it has inspired. However, I think the

accomplishment is obscured by the variety of Dworkin’s jurisprudential aims, and the

prominence of his debates with legal positivists. Dworkin’s stance on the above questions can be

characterized by two theses. I can defend his view by substantiating each. Whatever the fate of

his other philosophical views, Dworkin’s jurisprudence includes a clear-headed, though morally

challenging, understanding of the proper basis for decisions of law.

                                                                                                                         *  I  am  grateful  to  Michael  Giudice,  Doug  Husak,  Luis  Duarte  d’Almeida,  Max  Pensky,  Christopher  Morgan-­‐Knapp,  Charles  Goodman,  Tony  Preus,  Nicole  Hassoun,  Josh  Felix,  and  two  anonymous  reviewers  for  this  journal  for  comments  on  earlier  drafts  of  this  paper.      1  Ronald  Dworkin,  "Does  Law  Have  a  Function?  A  Comment  on  the  Two-­‐Level  Theory  of  Decision,"  Yale  Law  Journal  74  (1965):  640.  

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I. Introduction: To Have a Reason of Law

What is it to have a reason of law? How should legal norms be treated by the practical reason of

officials and subjects? I am interested here in addressing these two closely related questions. In

the legal philosophical literature, there is significant descriptive concern with “legal reasoning”

as it pertains to officials, and especially judges.2 Yet, there is less in the way of direct

consideration of what it is, in general, for officials to have a legal reason, and hence (i.e., in light

of the character of legal reasons) what form their legal reasoning ought generally take.3 How is

it that officials can conduct their practical reasoning well with respect to the law? Answering the

question might be thought to be primarily an issue of determining the content of an official’s

local law, for once an official discerns the valid norms of her jurisdiction, she can then simply

proceed to conduct herself accordingly. Such a view of official (or citizen) responsibility is

implausible, as I show below in reflecting on what it is to have a legal reason. The problem here

is not the now familiar one of what a legal actor should do in the face of ambiguity, vagueness,

or indeterminacy – problems frequently leading us to describe certain cases as “hard”. (A

complete account of correct legal reason should, nonetheless, shed light on the appropriate

                                                                                                                         2  See,  for  instance,  Neil  MacCormick,  Rhetoric  and  the  Rule  of  Law:  A  Theory  of  Legal  Reasoning  (New  York:  Oxford  University  Press,  2005),  1-­‐31;  Brian  Leiter,  Naturalizing  Jurisprudence:  Essays  on  American  Legal  Realism  and  Naturalism  in  Legal  Philosophy  (Oxford:  Oxford  University  Press,  2007),  15-­‐58.    MacCormick’s  theory  does,  additionally,  have  modest  normative  aims.    For  discussion,  see  Torben  Spaak,  "Guidance  and  Constraint:  The  Action-­‐Guiding  Capacity  of  Neil  Maccormick's  Theory  of  Legal  Reasoning,"  Law  and  Philosophy  26  (2007).  3  There  are,  of  course,  exceptions,  though  they  tend  to  raise  the  general  question  of  what  it  is  for  an  official  to  have  a  reason  of  law  indirectly  by  appeal  to  the  virtues  of  a  certain  mode  of  legal  reasoning  (e.g.,  the  predictability  afforded  by  formalistic  reasoning)  and  with  the  operative  assumption  of  a  special  obligation  on  the  part  of  officials  to  enforce  the  law  or  accord  themselves  with  prevailing  modes  of  legal  reasoning.    For  discussion,  see  Brian  Leiter,  "Heidegger  and  the  Theory  of  Adjudication,"  Yale  Law  Journal  106,  no.  102  (1996):  255-­‐61;  Anthony  R.  Reeves,  "Do  Judges  Have  an  Obligation  to  Enforce  the  Law?:  Moral  Responsibility  and  Judicial  Reasoning,"  Law  and  Philosophy  29,  no.  2  (2010).    Some  instances  of  writers  pushing  in  the  direction  of  the  general  question  are  David  Lyons,  "Derivability,  Defensibility,  and  Judicial  Decisions,"  in  Moral  Aspects  of  Legal  Theory:  Essays  on  Law,  Justice,  and  Political  Responsibility  (Cambridge:  Cambridge  University  Press,  1993);  Frederick  F.  Schauer,  Playing  by  the  Rules:  A  Philosophical  Examination  of  Rule-­‐Based  Decision-­‐Making  in  Law  and  in  Life  (Oxford:  Oxford  University  Press,  1991);  Jeffrey  Brand-­‐Ballard,  Limits  of  Legality:  The  Ethics  of  Lawless  Judging  (New  York:  Oxford  University  Press,  2010).  

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response to legal sources when such issues arise.) Rather, the problem is with how the fact of

positive law can give rise to a reason for action at all in the circumstances of human social life.

Once we have a general view of the character of a legal reason, we can then model the basic

form of well-conducted legal reasoning.

The organization of the paper is as follows. First, I explain the two theses. Second, I

provide textual evidence, from a variety of Dworkin’s works, to show that he in fact held them,

though frequently as elements of stronger claims. Third, I argue for each thesis. My arguments

employ some ideas found in Dworkin’s writing, and they are motivated by important aspects of

his characterization of legal practice. However, they differ in form and content from Dworkin’s

own defense of the theses. Fourth, I show that together, the theses substantiate important claims

Dworkin makes about the proper character of legal reasoning. Centrally, that constructive

interpretation is the correct method for construing the requirements of law for practical reason.

Constructive interpretation describes the way to arrive at a proper decision of law.

II. The Proper Basis for Legal Decisions: Two Theses

A decision, as I will use the term, is simply a determination about how to act. Practical reason is

at least in the business of determining how we ought to decide and, hence, act. A decision of law

is a decision about what to do in view of the law. It is not an all-things-considered determination

about what to do, but an answer to the question: what does the fact of existing legal norms imply

about how I ought to act?4 Once a decision of law is made, practical reason could further decide

that one should do, all-things-considered, something else. Slightly differently, though this

formulation is provisional, a legal decision is a determination about what to do in light of a

                                                                                                                         4  Or,  in  terms  more  familiar  to  Dworkin’s  work:  ‘What  ought  I  do  in  virtue  of  true  propositions  of  law?’  Ronald  Dworkin,  Law's  Empire  (Cambridge,  MA:  Harvard  University  Press,  1986),  4.  

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subset of all facts: law facts. Normally, though, a decision maker will be concerned with a

smaller subset than the entire set of law facts, namely, those that appear relevant to the

circumstance.

Take some legal requirement of the form, ‘Persons A, Φ in circumstances x.’ For

instance, New York state law says (roughly): “Unless otherwise posted, no person shall drive a

vehicle in excess of fifty-five miles per hour on state highways.” This requirement obtains as a

fact of law. We might wonder what kind of fact a law fact is, and in virtue of what other facts

this particular legal fact obtains. We might agree with those legal positivists who assert that

law’s existence and content is entirely a matter of social fact.5 Or, we might hold that law facts

are a hybrid of social facts and other facts, e.g., facts about political morality or other evaluative

domains.6 Or, we can conceive of stranger views. Whatever conclusion we come to about the

nature of law, we can further wonder what decision we ought come to in light of it. I am driving

down the highway: how ought the fact of the speed limit inform my practical reason? More

broadly, what is the correct decision of law, given the array of relevant legal facts? I am

concerned with this question.

One response, here, is to reject my formulation of the above questions as conflating

separate issues. It might be said that a decision of law, strictly speaking, is simply a

determination about what is required from the standpoint of the relevant legal norms of the

jurisdiction in question. The response insists that we ought, for sake of clarity, keep distinct the

                                                                                                                         5  For  example,  Joseph  Raz,  The  Authority  of  Law:  Essays  on  Law  and  Morality  (Oxford:  Clarendon  Press,  1979),  39-­‐52.    Not  all  legal  positivists  view  the  “social  facts  thesis”  as  positivism’s  most  fundamental  commitment.    See,  for  instance,  Lyons,  "Moral  Aspects  of  Legal  Theory,"  77-­‐101.    Positivists  are  currently  divided  about  whether  it  is  problematic.    See  Kevin  Toh,  "An  Argument  against  the  Social  Fact  Thesis  (and  Some  Additional  Preliminary  Steps  Towards  a  New  Conception  of  Legal  Positivism),"  Law  and  Philosophy  27  (2008);  Barbara  Baum  Levenbook,  "How  to  Hold  the  Social  Fact  Thesis:  A  Reply  to  Greenberg  and  Toh,"  Oxford  Studies  in  Philosophy  of  Law  2  (2013).  6  See,  for  instance,  Dworkin,  Law's  Empire,  87-­‐113;  Mark  Greenberg,  "How  Facts  Make  Law,"  Legal  Theory  10  (2004).    

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idea of “decision of law” from the notion of, say, “morally justified decision under law.” The

former raises issues concerning the legal practices of the community, and questions of general

jurisprudence; the latter concerns matters of political obligation and authority, and of political

morality more generally. In response, I agree that we should clearly distinguish between legal

standards and (for instance) the standards of other social practices and morality. However,

insofar as a legal decision ought reflect legal reasons, I will deny that there is an important,

meaningful sense of “correct legal decision” apart from how I describe it. Part of my contention

is that the hypothetical interlocutor is the obscurantist. I give my full response in the fourth

section, and now begin by defining the two theses.

The first thesis, stated initially, is:

Legal Reasons as Legitimacy Reasons Thesis (LRLR): Law is a reason to act pursuant to its terms if and only if it is a legitimacy reason to so act.

A “legitimacy reason” is a moral reason capable of justifying the use of political power, i.e.,

which supports the use of political power in one way or another.7 One corollary of the thesis is

                                                                                                                         7  The  concept  of  legitimacy  is  used  in  a  variety  of  fashions  in  political  theory,  and  my  use  here  is  somewhat  narrow,  though  it  fits  much  existing  usage.    As  I  use  it,  the  exercise  of  political  power  is  legitimate  when  it  is  morally  permissible,  i.e.,  when  it  is  supported  by  a  justification  showing  it  to  be  non-­‐wrongful.    A  “legitimacy  reason”  is  a  consideration  that  figures  into  such  a  justification,  supporting  the  inference  that  the  exercise  of  power,  on  the  occasion,  is  permissible.    We  find  legitimacy  similarly  treated  as  a  ‘permission  right’  in  the  work  of  Christopher  Heath  Wellman,  "Liberalism,  Samaritanism,  and  Political  Legitimacy,"  Philosophy  and  Public  Affairs  25,  no.  3  (1996):  211-­‐12;  Allen  Buchanan,  Justice,  Legitimacy,  and  Self-­‐Determination:  Moral  Foundations  for  International  Law,  Paperback  ed.  (Oxford:  Oxford  University  Press,  2004),  233-­‐60;  David  Estlund,  Democratic  Authority:  A  Philosophical  Framework  (Princeton:  Princeton  University  Press,  2008),  41;  John  Rawls,  Political  Liberalism,  Paperback  ed.  (New  York:  Columbia  University  Press,  1996),  216-­‐20.    Sometimes  “legitimacy”  is  used  to  refer  to  the  specifically  procedural  credentials  of  a  political  decision  such  that  the  procedure  by  which  a  decision  was  arrived  at  itself  warrants  acting  accordingly.    Jeremy  Waldron,  "Rights  and  Majorities:  Rousseau  Revisited,"  in  Liberal  Rights:  Collected  Papers  1981-­‐1991  (Cambridge:  Cambridge  University  Press,  1993),  393.    My  use  is  inclusive  of  this  sense,  but  not  limited  to  it,  since  I  allow  that  substantive  considerations  will  often  render  the  exercise  of  political  power  permissible  (how  so  will  depend  on  the  correct  substantive  account  of  legitimacy).    Alternatively,  we  might  use  “legitimacy”  to  indicate  a  certain  normative  standing  in  a  political  order  that  accords  specific  privileges.    As  examples  of  this  type  of  usage,  we  might  say  that  state  X  is  legitimate,  and  mean  that  it  is  prima  facie  immune  from  justified  interference  within  some  scope  of  its  affairs,  or  that  it  deserves  certain  institutional  recognition  in  the  international  order.    William  A.  Edmundson,  Three  Anarchical  Fallacies:  An  Essay  on  Political  Authority  (Cambridge:  Cambridge  University  Press,  1998),  35-­‐70;  Buchanan,  Justice,  Legitimacy,  and  Self-­‐Determination:  Moral  Foundations  for  International  Law,  261-­‐88.    Also,  we  might  use  “legitimacy”  to  refer  to  a  larger  package  of  

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that all legal reasons are legitimacy reasons (though, not all legitimacy reasons are legally

registered). The fact of law only counts as a reason in favor of some course of action if it is also

a consideration of the sort that is capable of supporting the use of political power.

To illustrate LRLR, take a legal requirement of the above form, ‘Persons A, Φ in

circumstances x,’ where you are an A in x. Call the legal requirement “R.” None of the

following, if true, would show that R is a reason to Φ: the fact that you promised a friend to Φ,

that morality independently requires you to Φ, or that (again, independently of the law) Φ-ing

tends to advance your personal interests. Each would only show that you have reason to Φ, not

that R itself is such a reason. LRLR concerns when the legal fact of R can be a reason to Φ.

The thesis first denies that considerations incapable of justifying political power could render R a

reason to Φ. For instance, if Rawls’s “liberal principle of legitimacy” is the correct criterion of

legitimacy,8 then LRLR states that none of the following, if true, would show that R is a reason

to Φ: God has ordained that subjects obey laws produced by the procedure that legislated R, R’s

legality is beneficial to your family and friends, or that an esoteric moral code would recommend

R as a law for the circumstances in question. It might be thought that (if true) these are reasons,

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       moral  powers  than  a  mere  permission  right,  such  as  a  special  right  on  the  part  of  a  state  to  create  and  enforce  moral  duties  for  its  subjects.    A.  John  Simmons,  "Justification  and  Legitimacy,"  Ethics  109,  no.  4  (1999).    We  need  not  see  these  different  uses  as  competitive.    Rather  than  seeing  any  one  of  these  as  essentially  correct,  we  should  view  their  propriety  as  depending  upon  the  theoretical  aims  of  an  account.    So  long  as  an  approach  is  explicit  about  the  sense  in  question,  it  can  deploy  “legitimacy”  however  best  illuminates  what  it  seeks  to  illuminate.    I  will  mention  that  separating  permissible  exercise  from  the  matter  of  the  obligations  of  the  subject  of  enforcement  has  been  with  us  since  at  least  Hobbes.    For  discussion,  see  Susanne  Sreedhar,  Hobbes  on  Resistance:  Defying  the  Leviathan  (New  York:  Cambridge  University  Press,  2010),  89-­‐104.  Finally,  I  will  not  offer  a  substantive  account  of  legitimacy,  i.e.,  a  theory  as  to  what  reasons  are  (in  fact)  capable  of  legitimating  political  power.    This  is  appropriate  since  my  aim  is  to  defend  a  view  regarding  the  role  of  such  considerations  for  proper  legal  reasoning  that  holds  irrespective  of  which  substantive  theory  is  correct.  8  “[O]ur  exercise  of  political  power  is  proper  and  hence  justifiable  only  when  it  is  exercised  in  accordance  with  a  constitution  the  essentials  of  which  all  citizens  may  reasonably  be  expected  to  endorse  in  the  light  of  principles  and  ideals  acceptable  to  them  as  reasonable  and  rational.”  Rawls,  Political  Liberalism,  217.  Rawls  limits  the  principle  to  democratic  societies,  but  that  need  not  detain  us  here.  

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and that R at least triggers them,9 and thus that R is a reason to Φ in view of them, even if they

are incapable of justifying political power. LRLR denies this, insisting that the legal fact of R

would not be shown to be a reason to Φ on the basis of such considerations. The thesis second

states that if legitimacy reasons support R (as a legal requirement) in the actual circumstances,

then R is a reason to Φ. For example, if (1) R restricts certain freedoms for the sake of public

health, (2) public health of the sort in question is within the proper purview of political

governance, (3) the freedoms in question are legitimately curtailed or modified for the sake of

that end, and (4) the legal fact of R makes it the case that Φ-ing promotes that end, then R is a

legal reason to Φ. In that case, R itself is a reason to Φ (absent R, there are no public health

reasons to Φ), and it is a legitimacy reason.10 LRLR does not deny that an agent can have

legitimacy reasons in a circumstance the possession of which is not a function of legal facts. It

says, rather, that if a legal fact is a legal reason for someone, it is also a legitimacy reason, i.e., a

consideration capable of playing a justificatory role in showing the person’s exercise of political

power to be permissible.

The second thesis, stated initially, is:

Legal Decision Thesis (LD): A decision of law ought to be based exclusively on legal reasons. A decision of law should serve the weightiest relevant legal reasons.

The legal decision thesis concerns the character of proper legal reason. For a legal decision, it

defines the type of considerations on which practical reason ought to rely, how legal norms

should be regarded by practical reason, and how such reason ought move to a decision. As noted

                                                                                                                         9  In  the  straightforward  sense  described  by  Enoch.    See  David  Enoch,  "Reason-­‐Giving  and  the  Law,"  Oxford  Studies  in  Philosophy  of  Law  1  (2011).  10  We  might  think  of  legitimacy  reasons  as  a  subclass  of  moral  reasons  and,  according  to  LRLR,  legal  reasons  as  a  further  subclass  of  legitimacy  reasons.    Legal  reasons  are  those  legitimacy  reasons  triggered  by  legal  facts  on  a  particular  occasion.    According  to  LRLR,  legal  reasons  do  not  comprise  a  sphere  of  normativity  apart  from  legitimacy,  though  the  sphere  of  legitimacy  reasons  is  normally  larger  than  the  sphere  of  legal  reasons.    Hence,  LRLR  does  not  deny  that  an  agent  can  have  legitimacy  reasons  apart  from  legal  reasons.  

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above, a decision of law is a determination about what to do in light of the relevant legal facts. 11

LD describes which facts and norms legal reasoning may deploy, and how it ought to deploy

them, to arrive at such a determination.

III. Dworkin on LRLR and LD

I articulate the theses in language somewhat unfamiliar to Dworkin’s own writing, but LRLR

and LD are central features of his jurisprudence capable of explaining his commitment to some

of his most distinctive claims about legal disagreement and reasoning. Though my aims in the

paper are not primarily exegetical, I here provide textual evidence that he held the theses. The

role LRLR and LD play in grounding distinctive features of Dworkin’s jurisprudence will

become evident later, after I defend them.

Dworkin’s early movement in the direction of both theses is visible in a 1963 article.12

Dworkin argues that in hard cases, the absence of a governing legal rule does not imply that a

judge is not legally bound by established principles or policies, which function qualitatively

differently than rules in the logic of decision. Whereas a rule simply applies or not, relevant

legal principles or policies give reasons of various weight that the judge must discern and

adjudicate to arrive at a correct legal decision. Dworkin continues:

If the judge were free to adopt his personal preferences as legal standards, then indeed his decisions would be chosen. But he is not. He is subject to the overriding principle that good reasons for judicial decision must be public standards rather than private prejudice. And he is subject to principles stipulating how such standards shall be established and what judicial use shall be made of them.13

The non-rule legal standards have various sources, including precedent and legislation.                                                                                                                          11  It  is  worth  restating  that  the  legal  decision  is  not  an  all-­‐things-­‐considered  judgment  about  what  to  do  –  it  is  narrow  in  the  sense  just  described.    After  arriving  at  a  proper  legal  decision,  an  agent  could  (perhaps  on  the  basis  of  non-­‐legally  registered  legitimacy  considerations)  responsibly  decide  to  act  otherwise,  all-­‐things-­‐considered.    LD  does  not  deny  this.  12  Ronald  Dworkin,  "Judicial  Discretion,"  Journal  of  Philosophy  60  (1963).  13  Ibid.,  634-­‐35.    His  emphasis,  here  and  after.  

9    

But [the judge] must sometimes recognize a third source: judgments of the community at large or some identifiable segment thereof. The court refers to such judgments when it rejects a particular result or rule as unjust, as well as when it more explicitly invokes the ideals of the society.14

When these judgments are at issue, the judge “is no more entitled to choose an answer on private

grounds here than at any earlier or later point in his reasoning; he is expected here as there to

justify his decision in terms of what he takes to be the most fundamental community conceptions

of social or political justice.”15 To summarize the salient points, all good reasons for judicial

decisions are public standards (as opposed to matters of private discretion), and all relevant such

legal standards are reasons. In fact, recognized public standards of justice can override an

applicable legal rule. Presumably, the difference between public and private standards matters

for the judicial office because it marks a difference in the considerations capable of rendering

legitimate the exercise of political power. Hence, saying the above is close to endorsing LRLR

(at least for the courtroom), though it contains additional suggestions about the character of

legitimacy and the forms legal standards can take. Moreover, Dworkin’s emphasis that judges

must justify their decisions narrowly in terms of relevant public legal standards strongly suggests

LD.

More than a decade later, Dworkin argues that judicial decisions ought (and frequently

do) enforce existing political rights. The “institutional history acts not as a constraint on the

political judgment of judges but as an ingredient of that judgment, because institutional history is

part of the background that any plausible judgment about the rights of an individual must

accommodate.”16 Slightly differently, the institutional practice matters to the judge because it

speaks to the political rights people in fact have, and people deserve to have their political rights

enforced. Dworkin continues:

                                                                                                                         14  Ibid.,  635.  15  Ibid.,  636.  16  Taking  Rights  Seriously  (Cambridge,  MA:  Harvard  University  Press,  1977),  87.  

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REASONS  OF  LAW    

Judges, like all political officials, are subject to the doctrine of political responsibility. The doctrine states, in its most general form, that political officials must make only such political decisions as they can justify within a political theory that also justifies the other decisions they propose to make.17

Aside from urging an interpretive consistency that foreshadows his later “law as integrity,”

Dworkin’s doctrine appears to state that the only considerations that ought matter to officials are

those recognized by a political morality as capable of justifying the exercise of political power.

Again, although Dworkin defends several additional views in the article, we find him here

expressing ideas quite similar to LRLR and LD.

In subsequent years, Dworkin’s jurisprudential views evolve in important respects, but

his commitment to LRLR and LD remain constant.18 In Law’s Empire, Dworkin contends:

[T]he most abstract and fundamental point of legal practice is to guide and constrain the power of government in the following way. Law insists that force not be used or withheld, no matter how useful that would be to ends in view, no matter how beneficial or noble these ends, except as licensed or required by individual rights and responsibilities flowing from past political decisions about when collective force is justified.19

The book’s theory has it that any interpretation of local law, for the purpose of deciding under it,

must employ (even if implicitly) some moral political account of what justifies this insistence.

The successful account of legitimacy will settle which rights and responsibilities “flow from”

past political decisions.20 Even if law’s basic claim fails, the account of legitimacy that

demonstrated this would then, on Dworkin’s view, settle how legal participants should construe

legal practice in their reasoning.21 As readers of Law’s Empire know, it attempts to do much

more than explicate LRLR and LD, but the book’s basic commitments embody the theses.

                                                                                                                         17  Ibid.  18  A  commitment  expressed  in  various  places  in  the  years  intervening  Taking  Rights  Seriously  and  Law’s  Empire.    See,  for  instance,  ""Natural"  Law  Revisited,"  University  of  Florida  Law  Review  34,  no.  2  (1982):  165-­‐66,  70-­‐73,  83-­‐87;  "Law  as  Interpretation,"  Texas  Law  Review  60  (1982):  542-­‐46;  A  Matter  of  Principle  (Cambridge,  MA:  Harvard  University  Press,  1985),  143-­‐44.  19  Law's  Empire,  93.  20  Ibid.,  45-­‐101.  21  Ibid.,  151-­‐75.  

11    

Dworkin’s later work reaffirms these basic commitments,22 though often while additionally

defending substantive views about political legitimacy, rights, the nature of legal facts, and the

content of law.

IV. Defense of the Theses

LRLR and LD are core and long-standing commitments of Dworkin’s jurisprudence. But, so

what? And why should we accept them? I answer the former in the next section, and the latter

here. LRLR states that law is a reason to act pursuant to it if and only if it is a legitimacy reason

to so act. Its defense relies on three ideas. First, the exercise of political power requires

legitimacy. Perhaps innocuous and almost platitudinous, but the idea does say that it is wrongful

to exercise political power in a way that cannot be justified. On any particular occasion, where

the exercise of power is at stake, one can go wrong, by opting in a manner inadequately

supported by justificatory reasons. In doing so, one will have acted illegitimately, i.e.,

impermissibly with respect to the specific issue of use of political power.

I use “political power” in a somewhat broad sense. To possess political power is to have

the ability to affect the interests and aims of others via an interactive environment of concern to

multiple interests and aims. To exercise political power is to act in such an environment in a

manner that affects the interests and aims of at least one other person. It is political in the sense

that it concerns others’ interests and aims in a context of interaction, and it is power in the sense

that it is actual capacity to affect. This might be thought an overly capacious use of the concept

of political power. Often we think of such power narrowly in terms of institutional policy,

                                                                                                                         22  See,  for  instance,  Freedom's  Law:  The  Moral  Reading  of  the  American  Constitution  (Cambridge,  MA:  Harvard  University  Press,  1996),  7-­‐12;  Justice  in  Robes  (Cambridge,  MA:  Harvard  University  Press,  2006),  1-­‐21;  Justice  for  Hedgehogs  (Cambridge,  MA:  Harvard  University  Press,  2011),  400-­‐15;  "A  New  Philosophy  for  International  Law,"  Philosophy  &  Public  Affairs  41,  no.  1  (2013):  11-­‐13.  

12  

REASONS  OF  LAW    

official decision-making, or other activities of governance, and this definition includes the

mundane interactions of private individuals outside of overtly institutional settings. Many

ordinary interactions of neighbors, classmates, family members, fellow bus-riders, workplace

associates, and the like, count here as exercises of political power. I think this is appropriate for

present purposes. First, our aim here is to understand how to reason with positive law in the

various contexts of social life, so we need (though, this is to point to the next idea supporting

LRLR) an idea sufficiently broad in scope to plausibly encompass law’s doings in social life.

Law certainly concerns itself with official conduct, but it is also intimately involved with the

plethora of small- and medium-scale, unofficial activities. It purports to establish the contours of

property (and hence, for instance, what counts as trespass), the level of care owed to others in

everyday interactive conduct, what counts as a punishable infringement of another’s bodily

integrity, etc. Law concerns itself with both conspicuous and pedestrian uses of power. How

should law inform practical reason? The theses here seek to answer this in a general way, and

thus we need a broad understanding of political power. Second, independent of present

theoretical aims, understanding “political power” in such a broad fashion is credible. Unless we

have some special theoretical interest in governance, we should recognize that small-scale

exercises of power require legitimacy. If I carry dangerous substances aboard the bus or

discharge waste on my neighbor’s land, I wrong others by (at least) exercising my effective

discretion, i.e., my power in the interactive environment, impermissibly. This is just how

illegitimacy is understood here. We have a concept, then, that is suited to the inquiry, and

independently sensible. Law involves itself in interactive contexts large and small, and the

exercise of power in all such contexts (the first idea asserts) requires legitimacy.

13    

Second, law publicly regulates the use of political power,23 via at least primary and

secondary rules, and perhaps by other kinds of standards (e.g., principles) depending on the

correct view of what can count as a legal standard. This statement is primarily empirical and

descriptive, rather than conceptual or normative. Whatever law is precisely, and however it

ought conduct itself, where it exists (i.e., where there is a well-functioning legal system), it is

normally regulating the exercise of political power through publicly recognized standards, i.e.,

standards seen by some persons as setting the terms of proper social conduct. However, the

scope of ‘the public’ can vary for any given standard. Nearly all theories of positive law have it

that actual recognition figure, in some crucial way, to legality, such that legality can then explain

the factual ability of legal institutions to set standards that regulate social life.24 Perhaps law

does things beside regulate (e.g., it may have expressive functions), but it is almost always

setting a standard for the exercise of political power, effective (if it is) in view of some type of

common recognition. Relatedly, it is frequently de facto ultimate, in the sense that it is regarded

as the final arbiter (where it, in fact, regulates) of how to deploy political power. Law’s

recognitionally effective and frequently ultimate regulation of political power indicates that the

central moral questions about it are ones of legitimacy, of whether it organizes or deploys power

legitimately. Also, where there is an effective legal system, law is the salient regulator of

                                                                                                                         23  “Public”  refers  here  to  the  common  recognition  required  (at  some  level)  for  legal  standards  to  regulate  behavior  (qua  legal  standards).    Both  public  and  private  law  are  included.    Liability  rules  in  tort  law,  for  instance,  regulate  political  power  as  much  as  criminal  prohibitions,  and  both  are  effectively  operative  because  of  their  common  recognition,  either  direct  or  indirect  (e.g.,  certification  by  a  rule  of  recognition),  by  some  persons.    24  I  do  not  know  of  any  theorist,  in  recent  analytical  jurisprudence,  who  denies  this.    On  Hart’s  view,  for  instance,  the  crucial  recognition  occurs  at  the  level  of  officials’  acceptance  of  a  rule  of  recognition,  a  normally  complex  standard  that  “will  specify  some  feature  or  features  possession  of  which  by  a  suggested  rule  is  taken  as  a  conclusive  affirmative  indication  that  it  is  a  rule  of  the  group  to  be  supported  by  the  social  pressure  it  exerts.”    H.  L.  A.  Hart,  The  Concept  of  Law,  3rd  ed.  (Oxford:  Oxford  University  Press,  2012),  94.    This  acceptance  is  what,  fundamentally,  enables  a  legal  system  to  address  the  problems  of  social  order  faced  by  a  pre-­‐legal  society.    On  Dworkin’s  view,  a  necessary  condition  of  a  legal  system  is  the  presence  of  significant  (though  not  uniform)  pre-­‐interpretive  consensus  in  a  legal  community  on  a  large  array  of  standards  seen  to  properly  regulate  social  life.    Dworkin,  Law's  Empire,  65-­‐68,  87-­‐101.  

14  

REASONS  OF  LAW    

political power in large domains of activity. Questions about how to act legitimately will

frequently have to be, in one way or another, concerned with the state of law. Why ought the

judge, administrator, executive official, officer, citizen, etc., care about the state of positive law?

Because of its pertinence to what we owe each other with respect to the exercise of political

power. 25 Practical reason ought care about law centrally in virtue of its salience to practical

reason’s proper concern with legitimacy, and legitimacy is the primary type of moral issue raised

by law’s existence. The set of facts constitutive of the law are salient to practical reason

primarily because of their relevance to how to exercise political power legitimately.

Here is a worry.26 I frame the two ideas above to say that we all have reasons (whether

acting as officials, or ordinary persons in pedestrian ways) to exercise power (even if modest)

legitimately, and that an agent’s proper interest in law is a feature of law’s regulation of political

power (and hence, its relevance to a particular agent’s legitimate exercise of it). However, if I

                                                                                                                         25  Why  think  that  law  is  a  main  regulator  of  political  power?    Non-­‐legal  conventions,  for  instance,  frequently  regulate  political  power,  as  might  moral  norms  or  the  accepted  morality  of  a  group.    Indeed,  I  agree  that  non-­‐legal  norms  can  and  frequently  do  regulate  power,  and  even  that,  in  some  social  circumstances,  they  can  be  the  dominant  regulators.    Here  the  claim  is  not  conceptual,  that  a  necessary  condition  for  a  legal  system  is  that  it  be  the  primary  regulator  of  political  power.    Rather,  it  is  based  in  the  observation  that  in  modern  societies  with  well-­‐functioning  legal  systems,  law  pervasively  (though,  certainly  not  to  the  full  exclusion  of  other  norms)  governs  social  life.    It  effectively,  as  a  matter  of  social  fact,  controls  power.    To  illustrate,  constitutional  law  governs  the  organization  and  powers  of  central  political  institutions,  the  private  law  of  torts,  contract,  and  property  organize  and  govern  the  everyday  activities  of  individuals  and  firms,  criminal  law  helps  control  the  sanctions  organized  political  society  imposes  on  conduct,  and  administrative  and  regulatory  legal  regimes  regulate  health,  food,  land  use,  safety,  the  environment,  etc.    The  extent  to  which  law  governs  (compared  to  other  norms)  will  vary  by  social  circumstance  and  by  degree.    This  reality  the  present  points  are  wholly  comfortable  with.    What  is  important  here  is  that  first,  law’s  effective  regulation  is  sufficiently  pervasive  that  it  engenders  a  proper  interest  on  the  part  of  practical  reason  (given  the  concern  to  exercise  power  legitimately)  in  the  state  of  positive  law,  and  second,  positive  law  is  standardly  in  the  business  of  regulating  political  power  such  that  practical  reason’s  primary  interest  in  it  is  one  of  legitimacy.    These  obtain  in  large  arenas  of  contemporary  human  social  life.    To  the  extent  law  fails  to  effectively  regulate  a  social  venue,  practical  reason’s  legitimacy-­‐based  interest  in  positive  law  is  appropriately  diminished  –  which  is  to  say  that  practical  reason  is  correctly  less-­‐concerned  with  legal  reasoning,  as  it  will  have  less  to  do  with  acting  legitimately.    Matters  are  slightly  complicated  here,  though,  as  responsible  agents  must  be  concerned  with  the  prospective  effects  of  their  actions  on  how  political  power  is  legally  governed.    See  Anthony  R.  Reeves,  "The  Binding  Force  of  Nascent  Norms  of  International  Law,"  Canadian  Journal  of  Law  and  Jurisprudence  27,  no.  1  (2014).  26  I  am  grateful  to  an  anonymous  reviewer  for  pressing  me  to  clarify  and  defend  my  use  of  “political  power,”  and  raising  this  objection  specifically.  

15    

understand political power so broadly, then it looks like what is important are just general moral

rules governing interaction, leaving it mysterious what legal standards can add to people’s

reasons. As an agent seeking to act legitimately, why care about the law (as opposed to merely

the morality of legitimacy)? Indeed, as I say earlier, for law to count as a reason, it (i.e., the

standard itself) must be a reason. I here mention several ways law can contribute to people’s

reasons through the effective regulation of a social environment.27 First, effective law

sometimes coordinates behavior to achieve morally desirable results. In the public health

example given earlier, but for people’s legally coordinated behavior, an agent would not have

reason to act as the law prescribes. The law here is, therefore, a reason (if instrumentally) for

compliance. Its existence contributes to people’s reasons to act in certain ways. Similar

examples could be adduced with respect to, for instance, traffic, property, communications, and

the like.28 Second, law can be the result of a procedure capable of legitimizing political power.

For instance, a legislature’s democratic credentials, or an administrative agency’s privileged

epistemic standing, may confer legitimacy on a course of action by legalizing a standard,

legitimacy that would not obtain for the course of action absent the procedure’s legislation.

Third, the legality of a penal standard may supply it with a publicity that warrants its

enforcement. It may be independently immoral to engage in a certain type of fraud, but if a

polity has not criminalized the behavior, the legitimacy of punishing can be doubtful. The penal

standard, with its explicitly identified penalties, supplies prosecutors, judges, and other officials

                                                                                                                         27  I  discuss  at  some  length  how  law  can  contribute  to  people’s  reasons,  and  serve  (thereby)  as  a  practical  authority,  at  Anthony  R.  Reeves,  "Practical  Reason  and  Legality:  Instrumental  Political  Authority  without  Exclusion,"  Law  and  Philosophy  Forthcoming  (2015).  28  Which  is  not  to  say  that  coordination  is  the  only  issue  of  governance  pertinent  to  these  domains.    It  is  one  issue,  and  one  way  socially  effective  regulation  can  contribute  to  reasons.  

16  

REASONS  OF  LAW    

reason to enforce accordingly (including sentencing in accordance with the standard).29 The list

here is not exhaustive, and each of the types of cases just mentioned raises peculiar and

interesting issues. Yet, the examples show that, even defining political power as broadly as I

have, effective law regularly contributes to our reasons for action, the topic of the third idea.

The third idea concerns what it means to be a reason for action. A fact is a reason for

action if and only if it plays a certain justificatory role for practical reason. Namely, it performs

as a consideration in favor of a course of action. We could ask theoretical questions about the

nature of reasons, but it is doubtful that any substantive view would be permitted to conflict with

this role. Rather, a desideratum of a successful account is that it explain or cohere with this role.

A reason, in this justificatory sense, is different from explanatory reasons, both in the sense of

what a subject took to be her reasons in a circumstance, and what causally explains her action. I

also assume that an agent’s beliefs about justificatory reasons can be mistaken.

Take these ideas together. The fact of law is only a reason for what it requires if it plays

a justificatory role in favor of the course of action. Further, the fact of law will normally matter

to practical reason in virtue of its salience to the exercise of political power. Law can only

perform as a consideration in favor of the exercise of political power if it is a reason of the

proper type, i.e., a reason that is capable of justifying political power. Hence, all legal reasons

are legitimacy reasons. Also, if law is a legitimacy reason, it favors a course of action,30 and we

get the biconditional of LRLR: law is reason to act pursuant to its terms if and only if it is a

legitimacy reason.

Individually, the above three ideas are not, I take it, mind blowing. However, these

premises together imply LRLR, and along with LD, they imply that Dworkin was correct about                                                                                                                          29  Of  course,  not  all  penal  standards  are  legitimate,  or  legitimately  enforced.    The  example  is  only  intended  to  illustrate  how  law  can  contribute  to  reasons  people  have.  30  Against  the  background  of  all  additional  other-­‐affecting  actions/inactions  available  to  the  agent.  

17    

the proper structure of legal reasoning. The legal decision thesis states that a decision of law

ought to be based exclusively on legal reasons. The basic idea is simply that we have a

responsibility to avoid exercising political power irresponsibly. This might be thought to pertain

primarily to adjudicatory officials, like judges, but (as previously mentioned) it is relevant to all

persons participating in social life: judges, legislators, executive and administrative agents,

police officers, immigration officials, ordinary subjects. I drive down the road, enter others’

property, transact in the market, engage in activities that pose risks to others. In doing these

things I exercise power in an interactive environment that, consequently, can affect others’

interests in various ways. I can (though need not) drive recklessly, vandalize property, withhold

information about a product for sale, and use dangerous pesticides in my yard. I can, as an

ordinary subject of law, wrong others by exercising my effective discretion inappropriately.

This kind of wronging is more apparent in official practice: judges deciding what counts as

admissible evidence, juries deciding whether an act amounts to negligence, administrative

officials defining regulatory rules, immigration officials deciding whether to process violations,

etc. Here, officials have the opportunity to visibly exercise their effective discretion in a way

that wrongs affected parties. No less, political power is at issue at the point of compliance, as

well as administration.

Given the general responsibility to exercise political power appropriately, and the fact

that an effective legal system is the centrally salient regulator of political power, subjects need to

answer this question: what, in virtue of the law, should I do? What does the fact of law require

of me? Call a judgment attempting to answer this question the legal decision, as it concerns what

the law actually requires of the subject. It is a determination by practical reason about what to do

in light of a subset of facts: law facts pertinent to the choice situation. Given that what motivates

18  

REASONS  OF  LAW    

the question is a concern with the legitimate exercise of political power, subjects should only rely

on legal reasons when seeking to answer it. Moreover, in moving to legal judgment or decision,

one should obviously be moved by the weightiest legal reasons. LD is true. An agent arrives at

a correct legal decision when her practical reason weights, and responds appropriately to, the

relevant legal reasons. Since all legal reasons are legitimacy reasons, this is an endeavor of

moral discernment.

Two objections stand out here. First, law clearly supplies compliance reasons other than

legitimacy reasons. For example, it can create prudential reasons for compliance, even if

illegitimately. Laws restricting religious practices without compelling justification are

illegitimate, but the penalties attaching to noncompliance certainly give one reasons of prudence

to comply. Relatedly, why not think that law can trigger all manner of reasons? Reasons of

friendship, familial relations, or those pertaining to a religious ideal may not always be relevant

to legitimacy (in the sense explained above), but certainly law could trigger them. A person’s

religion may require that he render unto Caesar his due, and tax law may facilitate that very act,

so the fact of tax law is, in this case, a private religious reason to pay taxes pursuant to its terms.

LRLR, then, is false.

In response, when it comes to law, legitimacy reasons always dominate. Other reasons

are constrained to operate within the frame of what legitimacy reasons determine as permissible.

Consider, first, reasons of prudence. On an occasion, it might be prudent for me to steal

another’s legitimate holdings, or withhold information about the functionality of product for sale.

On this occasion, my reasons of prudence are largely disabled by legitimacy reasons. In

deciding whether or not to steal, ordinary prudential reasons ought not matter – the matter is

settled by considerations of legitimacy. In deciding how to sell my product, ordinary prudential

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reasons certainly matter, but legitimacy constrains the scope of my discretion such that these

reasons only operate where the legitimacy reasons permit them. I can permissibly use various

marketing strategies (and here I have prudential reason to some rather than others), but I would

wrong others by withholding certain information, and here my prudential interests do not

count.31 Of course, in certain circumstances, my prudential interests may be of such a character

that I can transgress these standards. Perhaps I am starving, and must steal to survive. Here,

though, the interest in question is likely to be recognized by legitimacy as deserving especially

strong consideration. I may transgress another’s holdings because, from the point of view of

legitimacy, the interest in question competes successfully against the proprietary interest.

The religious prohibition, then, certainly creates prudential reasons for compliance, but

only insofar as legitimacy recognizes the threatened interests as permissibly defensible by the

subject. Protecting oneself from imprisonment or loss of property certainly appears legitimate

here, especially given the illegitimacy of the prohibition – there are no competing legitimacy

concerns to disable otherwise legitimate interests. To assist intuition, consider a judge faced

with enforcing a plainly illegitimate and wrongful law, e.g., a fugitive slave act. Perhaps the

judge will lose her position, suffer financial or reputational loss, or even endure a short period of

imprisonment if she refuses to enforce. To a large extent, these narrow prudential considerations

simply ought not matter to the judge in the exercise of her office. She is deploying political

power, and this is the dominant concern.32 The point at, and way in, which prudential

                                                                                                                         31  The  sense  in  which  the  reasons  are  disabled  hardly  matters  here,  or  for  LRLR.    Perhaps  legitimacy  reasons  always  outweigh  the  other  reasons  in  question,  or  perhaps  those  other  reasons  are  preempted.    In  any  case,  practical  reason  can  disregard  ordinary  prudential  reasons  for  the  purposes  of  arriving  at  a  decision.    Or,  insofar  as  legitimacy  recognizes  some  class  of  ordinary  private  interests,  the  role  they  play  in  practical  reason  is  circumscribed  by  legitimacy:  it  defines  their  permissible  role  in  practical  reason.  32  She  might  resign,  as  well.    However,  this  is  beside  the  point  here.    The  issue  is  what  can  permit  law  to  be  a  reason  for  enforcing  or  complying  with  it.    The  judge’s  narrow  prudential  reasons  here  do  not  count  as  reasons  for  enforcement.  

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REASONS  OF  LAW    

considerations come to matter is precisely where and how legitimacy says so. Similarly, for the

average subject of law, the extent to and way in which he can treat his interests as reasons in the

common interactive environment is settled by legitimacy. Thus, the prudential reasons generated

by legal sanctions count for responsible practical reason only so far as legitimacy recognizes

them. Thus, law does not supply non-legitimacy prudential reasons. Or, insofar as it does, they

are relevant to practical reason only so far as legitimacy permits them to operate. On this latter

option, LRLR is not, strictly speaking, true. Yet, practical reason ought treat it as such – it

would make no difference to well-conducted practical reason for it to hold a more nuanced thesis

about the reasons of law. All this holds, in an identical way, for private reasons of other sorts.

Reasons of religious conviction, for instance, are similarly constrained by legitimacy. An

expression may be regarded by a practitioner as profane and, from view of the practitioner’s

religion, properly censorable. Yet, so far as the type of expression is protected by legitimacy

reasons, such that it is illegitimate to interfere with it, the religious reasons must surrender. Such

reasons are controlled by legitimacy, in the sense that legitimacy defines the theater for their

acceptable operation. It would be wrong for an official to directly censor, or set aside laws

effectively facilitating the protection of, the type of expression on the basis of these reasons, or

for a private individuals to create an environment where others are involuntarily insecure in the

capacity to express freely. In the context of the practitioner’s voluntary association, however,

legitimacy allows the reasons of conviction greater latitude.33

                                                                                                                         33  This  example  relies  on  modest  assumptions  about  the  correct  substantive  account  of  legitimacy,  i.e.,  on  the  correct  account  of  the  moral  grounds  of  permissible  exercise  of  political  power.    For  instance,  that  it  is  illegitimate  to  forcibly  constrain  some  expressions  in  view  of  their  mere  offensiveness  to  religious  adherents.    To  substantiate  the  assumption,  we  require  a  moral  political  theory  of  legitimacy.    The  central  point  here,  though,  is  about  the  role  legitimacy  plays  in  well-­‐conducted  practical  deliberations.    The  soundness  of  LRLR  depends  upon  this  role,  not  any  particular  substantive  theory  of  legitimacy.      

21    

The second objection was referenced earlier. It says that there is a sense of “legal

reason” that pertains not to what anyone has reason to do all things considered, but to what

legally speaking, or from the point of view of law, there is reason to do. In response, perhaps

saying “You have legal reason to Φ” is one loose way of indicating that a valid legal standard

demands that I Φ in the circumstances, but it is hard to see how it is theoretically useful way of

putting the point. In fact, if anything more is meant than a bare reference to an applicable legal

standard, the bald statement, “You have legal reason to Φ”, is misleading – unless it be given the

meaning I suggest. If the statement is meant to indicate that some people take the fact of the

standard to be a reason for me, because they take (for instance) the internal point of view with

respect to legal standards,34 then it has merely told us about those people’s beliefs about the

reasons I have. If the statement is intended to indicate that other people take the legality of the

standard as a reason to act pursuant to it, and thereby reason and act accordingly, then it offers an

explanation rather than a normative assertion about my reasons. Such a statement would confuse

explanatory and justificatory reasons if it were also intended as illuminating my normative

situation. Finally, if the statement “I have legal reason to Φ” is meant to refer to some other kind

of reasons applicable to me, then we are faced with an obscure notion of reason. A reason for

action is a consideration in favor of some course of action.

We can be far more direct. To say “You have legal reason to Φ” is to say that the fact of

law is a reason for me to Φ. LRLR treats the statement in this straightforward way. Moreover,

when not engaged in explanation, we normally use the language of reasons to point to facts that

ought matter in someone’s deliberations. If I query as to the right course of action, and you tell

me that I have legal reason to Φ, then we would hardly be having a conversation if you merely

                                                                                                                         34  Hart,  The  Concept  of  Law,  88-­‐91.    For  discussion,  see  Scott  J.  Shapiro,  "What  Is  the  Internal  Point  of  View?,"  Fordham  Law  Review  75,  no.  3  (2006).  

22  

REASONS  OF  LAW    

meant to refer to the fact of a legal standard requiring as much. We would only be having a

conversation if you also intended that the legality of the standard ought matter to my practical

deliberations. Or, if unprompted, you tell me that I have legal reason to Φ, then my natural

expectation should be that you are telling me something that I ought to care about. If you tell

friends openly committed to remaining childless that they have family reasons to purchase a

house, and upon inquiry, you reference the greater ease of raising children in such a house, then

your friends are rightly irritated. Your use of the language of reasons was misleading. There is

little to recommend, then, to even the casual and loose way of referring to valid legal standards

in terms of the possession of legal reasons.

Moreover, talk of a “correct legal decision” or a “correct decision, as a matter of law”

apart from the reasons for action that legal standards give rise to is similarly obscure. A decision

is an act of practical reason, and practical reason acts correctly when it responds appropriately to

its reasons. If practical reason abides by legal standards as (to put it loosely) those standards

understand themselves, but without the support of actual legal reasons, then it has failed at the

endeavor of arriving at a correct decision pertaining to law facts. It is not, in any clear sense, a

correct decision. It would be a correct legal decision if practical reason treated legal standards in

accordance with the reasons for action they give rise to. What else could we mean while

retaining fidelity to the idea of decision? Perhaps this: when we speak of “correct legal

decision,” we speak as if law is all the reason it claims, and are indicating what a proper decision

would look like if this were true. This removes some obscurity, but has the effect of making the

language of legal decision not very useful outside the hypothetical enterprise. It renders the idea

23    

of a correct legal decision (at best) indirectly relevant for legal reasoning and decision-making. 35

That is surely costly. Also, insofar as such usage invites treating law in practical reason in a way

uninformed by political legitimacy, it lends a presumptive, unearned impression of permissibility

to obedience. We can talk about what the law purports to require without the language of legal

decision. We can simply say that it is the law that I do such and such. This properly leaves open

what I ought to do with that fact, without theoretical cost. I do not mean to press a verbal

dispute, but the concepts of reason-possession and decision are most at home in discussions of

practical reason. Since the task here is to identify the proper mode of legal reasoning, it is

appropriate to regiment our use of the relevant concepts.

V. Legal Reasoning

The upshot of LRLR and LD for subjects of law, from high executive officials to ordinary

citizens, is that they ought to treat law constructively in their practical reason. I argue in this

section that legal reasoning, reasoning about what to do in virtue of applicable legal standards,

ought to have the form of constructive interpretation. With respect to local law, Dworkin offered

constructive interpretation as both a theory of legal content (i.e., a theory of what determines the

norms constitutive of local law) and a theory of proper legal reasoning. On the argument here, I

defend Dworkin on the latter score alone: I show that constructive interpretation describes the

basic mode of proper legal reason whatever its success as an account of legal content. First,

though, we should get clear on Dworkin’s own use of “constructive interpretation.”

“[C]onstructive interpretation is a matter of imposing purpose on an object or practice in

order to make of it the best possible example of the form or genre to which it is taken to                                                                                                                          35  Notice  that  a  consequence  of  the  as-­‐if  use  of  “legal  decision”  is  that  once  we  determine  what  is  the  correct  legal  decision  (on  its  terms),  we  are  in  no  position  to  draw  any  practical  inferences  with  respect  to  the  law  –  i.e.,  we  are  uninformed  about  how  to  decide  under  law.      This  is  a  strange  outcome  for  the  concept  of  correct  legal  decision.  

24  

REASONS  OF  LAW    

belong.”36 In general, constructive interpretation of an object requires a sense of its general kind

for the sake of construing the object (constrained by the object’s evident characteristics) as the

best possible instance of the kind. Constructively interpreted, the object is the best it can be

according to relevant kind-values. Dworkin contends that, successfully performed, constructive

interpretation offers a more complete picture (compared to our pre-interpretive understanding of

the object) of the object and its content, i.e., its characteristics and meaning. In properly

interpreting a novel, I try to understand it the best I can as a novel, and this will employ my

sense of what makes novels valuable – the aesthetic (and perhaps other) values pertinent to the

genre. This will tell me which novel to construct from the text, and the themes, plots, settings,

character motivations, and events to impute to the text as part of its meaning.37 Similarly,

according to Dworkin, social practices ought be interpreted constructively. “A participant

interpreting a social practice…proposes value for the practice by describing some scheme of

interests or goals or principles the can be taken to serve or express or exemplify.”38

Whereas in interpreting an artistic object, I will normally be employing aesthetic values, in

constructively interpreting a social practice I will standardly be employing moral or political

values. For instance, to interpret “courtesy,” I must show why courtesy-practices are valuable as

a social form, i.e., as a practice regulating our interactions and conduct, and make it into the best

it can be as a social practice. Standardly, this is to posit moral value onto it. Once I have an

attractive interpretation on the table that more or less fits the practice, e.g., that courtesy is a

matter of showing respect to moral equals, I can then detail the practices characteristics and

content – including, especially, the norms that are part of the practice. I can construct, from the

various courtesy practices I pre-interpretively ascribed to the social practice, a conception of                                                                                                                          36  Dworkin,  Law's  Empire,  52.  37  Ibid.,  53-­‐62.  38  Ibid.,  52.  

25    

what courtesy demands based on what best serves ‘evince respect for moral equals.’ The

interpretation can be revisionary, excluding practices I earlier regarded as courteous (as they may

not be up to the task of the point of the practice), and including concrete requirements previously

unrecognized (because they are particularly up to the task of the practice). The value of the

practice gives it determinate normative content.39

Hence, Dworkin continues, to constructively interpret law, we must posit some value to

the practice that enables us to discern its content. Law is in the force business – it is normally

about regulating political power in accordance with past political decisions – and we are

therefore faced with the task of justifying this practice, i.e., we are faced with articulating the

practice’s value in terms of legitimacy. What is the point of legal practice, and what justifies its

regulation of political life? With an answer in hand, we can then move to local law to discern

what it requires. Slightly differently, we are in a position to construct legal meaning (especially,

again, what norms are genuinely constitutive of the practice) from the legal practices of a

jurisdiction. Elements recognized by the justifying rationales will be construed in a way that

serves those rationales best, and elements wholly un-accommodated will be treated as not

genuinely law. The construction determines legal content. It tells us both the precise

characteristics of legal norms, and which norms are properly legal.40

Dworkin’s argument for constructive interpretation in law is (on my reading) complex,

and I have barely gestured at part of it above. My aim is to illustrate the idea. I will not

comment on the success of his actual arguments, insofar as they depart from my own.41 The core

idea I want is this: in order to understand what law factually requires of a subject, one must

                                                                                                                         39  Ibid.,  62-­‐72.  40  Ibid.,  87-­‐101.  41  For  one  prominent  critical  treatment,  see  Andrei  Marmor,  Interpretation  and  Legal  Theory,  2nd  ed.  (Portland:  Hart  Publishing,  2005),  1-­‐45.  

26  

REASONS  OF  LAW    

construe legal practice in terms of a legitimacy-based rationale that renders legal norms the best

they can be, as regulators of political power, in the circumstance.42 Aside from treating the

proper mode of legal reasoning as a direct engagement with political legitimacy, there are two

additional aspects of the approach to legal reasoning worth marking as distinctive. First, it

permits (in principle) surprising omissions. Legal norms pre-interpretively understood to bind

may be rendered null, from the view of practical reason, if they cannot be supported by a

legitimacy-based rationale. Second, constructive interpretation permits surprising inclusions.

Norms previously unrecognized, or recognized with different content, can bind if the best

legitimacy-based justification of legal practice endorses them. It is worth emphasizing that to

defend this basic idea is not to defend “law as integrity”43 or any other particular conception of

political legitimacy. Nonetheless, LRLR and LD validate constructive interpretation as the only

justifiable method of legal reasoning.

The argument below accompanies each premise with “(LRLR)” or “(LD)” to indicate

which thesis, or which thesis’s underlying ideas, the premise is based on.

1. The exercise of political power requires justification. To be legitimate, it must be capable of being shown to be permissible on the basis of considerations capable of justifying the exercise of power. Call such considerations “legitimacy reasons.” (LRLR)

2. Insofar as agents can affect others interests and aims in an interactive environment, they exercise political power. (LRLR/LD)

                                                                                                                         42  To  understand  what  law  ‘factually  requires’  of  a  subject  is  to  understand  what  requirements  it  actually  produces  for  practical  reason.    Of  course,  it  may  purport  to  require  much  more  (or,  even  less)  than  it  factually  does.    The  question  here  is  when  and  in  what  way  practical  reason  ought  treat  what  the  law  purports  to  require  as  required  –  in  what  sense  does  the  agent  have  reason  in  virtue  of  the  law.    My  assertion  here  is  that  constructive  interpretation,  as  a  theory  of  proper  legal  reason,  correctly  answers  this  issue.    I  need  not,  then,  deny  competing  conceptions  of  legal  content,  for  instance  Raz’s  view  that  legal  content  is  determined  by  social  sources  alone.    Raz,  The  Authority  of  Law:  Essays  on  Law  and  Morality,  39-­‐52.  43  This  much  like  how,  for  Dworkin,  the  project  of  substantiating  constructive  interpretation  as  a  general  approach  to  determining  legal  content,  in  Law’s  Empire,  is  independent  of  endorsing  a  particular  view  of  legitimacy  (say,  “conventionalism”  or  “integrity”).    The  defense  of  “integrity”  comes  after,  and  as  a  separate  matter  from,  the  defense  of  constructive  interpretation.    Dworkin,  Law's  Empire,  45-­‐113,  76-­‐275.      

27    

3. Hence, agents in an interactive environment have a responsibility to exercise power legitimately. To do otherwise is to wrong others. (LD)

4. Where law exists, it is a salient regulator of power. It has, by virtue of its recognition,

special prominence in the society’s effective structuring of the interactive environment and social relationships. (LRLR)

5. Given this, the central moral concerns about law are ones of legitimacy. The fact of law

only counts in favor of a course of action if it is a legitimacy reason for that action. (LRLR)

6. If law is a legitimacy reason, it favors a course of action. Call legal facts that are reasons

(i.e., legitimacy reasons) “legal reasons.” (LRLR)

7. Since law is a salient regulator of power, and since agents must exercise power responsibly, they must answer the question, “What does the fact of law require of me?”, and so exclusively in terms of legal reasons. (LD)

8. For the sake of the legal decision, i.e., the judgment about what to do in virtue of the law,

an agent should prefer weightier legal reasons over less weighty. (LD)

C1: In order to discern what law factually requires of a subject in a circumstance, one must construe law facts in terms of the best legitimacy-based rationale available.44

C2: If a legal fact, e.g., a legal standard, cannot be given a sound legitimacy-based justification, it is properly ignored by practical reason. It would be misleading to say that one has a legal obligation to comply, since one would have no practically significant legal reason to do it. C3: Furthermore, if the fact of a legal standard demanding Φ makes it the case that the best legitimacy-based rationales indicate that one Φ’ or (quite different act) ψ, then one has legal reason, and could be required by law, to Φ’ or ψ.45

                                                                                                                         44  In  other  words,  one  must  make  law  ‘the  best  it  can  be’  in  terms  of  political  legitimacy.    Why  best?  This  follows  from  premise  8,  that  we  ought  to  prefer  weightier  legal  reasons  to  less  weighty  when  political  power  is  at  stake.    How  do  we  avoid  confusing  what  the  law  is  with  what  it  ought  to  be?    Again,  the  theory  defended  here  is  not  about  the  nature  of  law  or  its  content,  but  about  how  to  reason  with  law.    We  avoid  the  confusion  by  marking  the  distinction  between  valid  legal  standards  and  what  those  standards  factually  require  of  an  agent.    I  am  grateful  to  an  anonymous  reviewer  for  pressing  me  to  clarify  these  points  here  and  above.      45  To  illustrate,  consider  a  judge  faced  with  a  previously  unaddressed  matter  of  common  law,  e.g.,  an  issue  about  the  precise  scope  of  liability  for  emotional  injuries.    Prior  judicial  decisions  may  make  it  the  case  that  only  certain  options  are  viable  (even  if  those  decisions  were  morally  suboptimal  at  the  time  of  their  issuance)  from  view  of  legitimacy  –  to,  for  instance,  protect  certain  expectations  or  maintain  doctrinal  stability  attractive  in  view  of  administrative  efficiency.    Dworkin’s  discussion  of  McLoughlin  is  helpful.  See  Dworkin,  Law's  Empire,  238-­‐54.    Importantly,  though,  the  phenomenon  indicated  here  could  obtain  even  if  we  do  not  accept  “integrity”  as  an  independent  political  virtue.      

28  

REASONS  OF  LAW    

The argument here shows that, whatever Dworkin’s additional aims in offering the theory,

constructive interpretation successfully models correct legal reason. Moreover, LRLR and LD

substantiate constructive legal reasoning while preserving its important and distinctive aspects,

especially surprising omissions and surprising inclusions. Hence, Dworkin provides an accurate

account of what it is to have a legal reason, and a correct picture of the basic consequences of

this view for legal reasoning. It is, perhaps, an especially demanding vision of legal reasoning –

it is protestant in its mandate for individual discernment – but if the above argument is sound, it

is the correct picture no less.

I have not supplied a substantive account of legitimacy, and I have set aside many

important issues concerning what such an approach to legal reason would look like in practice.46

Obviously, we are not (as officials, or average subjects of law) Herculean in our ability to discern

the total moral implications of all our legal decisions. However, this is hardly unique to legal

decision-making – it is a pervasive feature of much moral decision-making, whether it concerns

friendship, family, professional life, cosmopolitan obligations to the socially vulnerable, personal

conduct in historically patriarchal social institutions, etc. In all these matters, moral dilemmas

can arise, we can disagree, and we can easily misjudge (from bias, or any other burden of

judgment). Moreover, we are often faced with deciding under resource constraints of time,

information, and cognitive energy, and must (to reason well) be sensitive to our limitations.

What I can say, as a general point, is this. On the view defended here, proper legal reason is a

branch of moral reason. As such, whatever heuristics and decision-methods are appropriate to

address the just mentioned general difficulties for moral decision-making are also appropriate for

the context of legal reasoning. Constructive legal reasoning is not an invitation to hubris – it is

                                                                                                                         46  I  say  more  elsewhere.    See  Anthony  R.  Reeves,  "Judicial  Practical  Reason:  Judges  in  Morally  Imperfect  Legal  Orders,"  Law  and  Philosophy  30,  no.  3  (2011).  

29    

constrained by all the standards of good moral reasoning. To partially restate, it is a practice of

earnestly and humbly discerning what we owe each other in political life.

VI. Conclusion

Roughly twenty years after Dworkin announced that jurisprudence’s proper agenda was to

discern what counts as a good reason of law, Dworkin reformulated the basic question of

jurisprudence as: “What sense should be given to propositions of law?”47 Undoubtedly, this shift

in focus was at least partly motivated by his positivist critics. Given his persuasive response to

his first question, though, it was perhaps mistaken to let legal positivists set the agenda for legal

philosophy. This is not to deny that there are theoretical puzzles with which contemporary

general jurisprudence deals, or that there is nothing at stake in the Dworkin/positivist debates.

Yet, it is surely as interesting and important to know what counts as a legal reason as it is to

know what constitutes a legal standard, and we should want legal philosophy to illuminate the

proper character of legal reasoning. Moreover, putting the theoretical approach in these terms

undermines the sense of retreat involved in giving positivism its due, and acknowledging its

many insights. Joseph Raz, in an article critical of Dworkin’s jurisprudence, acknowledges (with

some reservation) that perhaps Dworkin has offered a correct ethics of adjudication. Raz insists,

though, that Dworkin is mistaken in thinking that judges would, by adopting his method of

adjudication, be following the law.48 Perhaps, but in any case, we can reply: “Nonetheless, they

would be countenancing all applicable reasons of law and, should they conduct their legal reason

well, arrive at a correct legal decision.” In other words, they would have treated law in all the

                                                                                                                         47  Dworkin,  "Law  as  Interpretation,"  179.  48  Joseph  Raz,  "Authority,  Law,  and  Morality,"  The  Monist  68  (1985):  310.    Raz’s  example  on  the  page  is  somewhat  narrow,  concerning  a  case  that  seems  to  involve  legal  indeterminacy,  but  his  point  could  be  generalized  on  the  basis  of  his  theory.    By  using  morality  to  discern  the  content  of  the  law,  judges  (and  others)  would  only  by  happenstance,  on  Raz’s  view,  end  up  following  the  law  –  they  would  have  an  unreliable  guide  to  legal  content.  

30  

REASONS  OF  LAW    

ways it deserves to be treated from view of practical reason. The victory for the positivist (if it is

one) then looks fairly narrow. In any case, Dworkin does, I have argued, offer a correct general

answer to the general question of what it is to have a reason of law.

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