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Positivism and Interpreting Legal Content: Does Law Call for a Moral Semantics?
Author(s) -
HIMMA KENNETH EINAR
Publication year - 2009
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.1467-9337.2008.00410.x
Subject(s) - directive , content (measure theory) , principle of legality , positivism , law , semantics (computer science) , epistemology , legal positivism , authorization , sociology , philosophy , psychology , political science , computer science , legal realism , legal profession , computer security , mathematics , mathematical analysis , programming language
In two fascinating papers, Jules Coleman has been considering an idea, first articulated and defended by Scott Shapiro in his forthcoming book Legality , that law calls for a moral semantics. In a recent paper, Coleman argues it is a conceptual truth that legal content stating behavioral requirements, whether construed as propositions or imperatives, can “truthfully be redescribed as expressing a moral directive or authorization” (Coleman 2007, 592). For example, the directive “mail fraud is illegal” expresses , if not that mail fraud is morally wrong, then the idea that we have a content‐independent moral reason for not committing mail fraud. In this essay, I will attempt to explicate and evaluate Coleman's arguments, as well as to determine what the “Redescription Thesis,” as I call it, amounts to.