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What Does ‘Legal Obligation’ Mean?
Author(s) -
Wodak Daniel
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
pacific philosophical quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.914
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1468-0114
pISSN - 0279-0750
DOI - 10.1111/papq.12230
Subject(s) - obligation , jurisprudence , meaning (existential) , normative , moral obligation , epistemology , philosophy , law , sociology , political science
What do normative terms like ‘obligation’ mean in legal contexts? On one view, which H.L.A. Hart may have endorsed, ‘obligation’ is ambiguous in moral and legal contexts. On another, which is dominant in jurisprudence, ‘obligation’ has a distinctively moralized meaning in legal contexts. On a third view, which is often endorsed in philosophy of language, ‘obligation’ has a generic meaning in moral and legal contexts. After making the nature of and disagreements between these views precise, I show how linguistic data militates against both rivals to the generic meaning view, and argue that this has significant implications for jurisprudence.