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Effects of Defects—Action or Argument? Thoughts about Deryck Beyleveld and Roger Brownsword’s Law as a Moral Judgment *
Author(s) -
ALEXY ROBERT
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
ratio juris
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.344
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 1467-9337
pISSN - 0952-1917
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9337.2006.00322.x
Subject(s) - argument (complex analysis) , phenomenon , economic justice , action (physics) , law , agency (philosophy) , foundation (evidence) , ideal (ethics) , law and economics , sociology , philosophy , epistemology , political science , physics , biochemistry , chemistry , quantum mechanics
. Two claims lay the foundation for Beyleveld and Brownsword’s legal theory. The first says that immoral laws cannot be law, the second that rights to freedom and welfare can be proven to be logically necessary given merely the phenomenon of agency. The author argues that both claims are too strong. The first is an overidealization of law, which fails to do justice to its double nature as a real as well as an ideal phenomenon. The second must fail, for a moral “ought” cannot be deduced from a merely instrumental “ought.”