Obligations beyond morality: Bernard Williams and Ronald Dworkin on legal normativity

A Critique of Ronald Dworkin’s View on Legal Normativity

Authors

  • Daniel Murata Doutor em Direito pela University of Surrey

Keywords:

Bernard Williams, Ronald Dworkin, Legal Obligations

Abstract

In this essay I will draw from moral philosopher Bernard Williams to criticise the claim made by Ronald Dworkin that legal obligations are a particular kind of moral obligations. In Section 2 I will explain Dworkin’s argument in favour of legal obligations as moral obligations. This starts with a picture of the “moral community” and relies heavily on Dworkins’ interpretive method. In Section 3 I will criticise Dworkin’s theory for its reliance on unwarranted claims about practical reasoning and the powers of morality. I will adopt a more constructive tone in 4, as I will outline an alternative view that recognises the richness of the point of view of concrete agents. The gist of the criticism developed in the essay is that Dworkin endorses an overly moralised view on obligations, a view that ignores that people can genuinely feel obligated by demands that are not moral.

Author Biography

Daniel Murata, Doutor em Direito pela University of Surrey

Doutor em Filosofia do Direito pela University of Surrey (Reino Unido). Mestre em Direito, área de concentração em Filosofia e Teoria Geral do Direito pela FDUSP. Graduado pela Faculdade de Direito do Largo de São Francisco (FDUSP). Foi membro do Programa de Ensino Tutorial em Sociologia Jurídica (PET-Sociologia Jurídica/SESU-MEC) e estudante intercambista na Universidade de Glasgow (Escócia). Tem experiência nas áreas de Filosofia do Direito, Filosofia Política, Filosofia Moral, Filosofia dos Contratos e Teorias da Responsabilidade. Foi bolsista pela Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (University of Surrey). Foi bolsista de mestrado pela Fapesp e bolsista PAE em 2017 e 2018. E-mail: danielpmurata@gmail.com

References

DEIGH, John. Morality and Personal Relations. In: DEIGH, John. The Sources of Moral Agency – Essays in Moral Psychology and Freudian Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
DWORKIN, Ronald. Law’s Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986.
DWORKIN, Ronald. Hart’s Postscript and the Point of Political Philosophy. In: DWORKIN, Ronald. Justice in robes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006.
DWORKIN, Ronald. Justice for Hedgehogs. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011.
FINNIS, John. Natural Law Theories. In: ZALTA, N. (ed). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Winter 2016 Edition. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/natural-law-theories/, 2016. Accessed on 18 July 2022.
FRANKFURT, Harry. The Reasons of Love. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.
HART, H.L.A. The Concept of Law 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
HERSHOVITZ, Scott. The End of Jurisprudence. Yale Law Journal, Vol. 124, p. 1160-1204, 2015
HONORÉ, Tony. Must We Obey? Necessity as a Ground of Obligation. Virginia Law Review, Vol. 67 No. 1, p. 39-61, 1981.
PERRY, Stephen. Hart on Social Rules and the Foundations of Law: Liberating the Internal Point of View. Fordham Law Review, Vol. 75, p. 1171-1210, 2006.
SMYTH, Nicholas. Integration and authority: rescuing the ‘one thought too many’ problem. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, DOI: 10.1080/00455091.2017.1415105, p. 1-19, 2018.
RODRIGUEZ-BLANCO, Veronica. Law and Authority under the Guise of the Good. Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2014.
RODRIGUEZ-BLANCO, Veronica. Action in Law’s Empire: Judging in the Deliberative Mode. Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence, Vol. 29, No. 2, p. 431-456, 2016.
RAZ, Joseph. The Obligation to Obey. In: RAZ, Joseph. Ethics in the public domain: essays in the morality of law and politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
RAZ, Joseph. The Obligation to Obey the Law. In: RAZ, Joseph. The Authority of Law, 2nd Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Pres, 2009a.
RAZ, Joseph. Respect for Law. In: RAZ, Joseph. The Authority of Law, 2nd Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Pres, 2009b.
SHINER, Roger. Law and Its Normativity. In: PATTERSON, Dennis (ed). A Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory. United Kingdom: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
SOPHOCLES. Women of Trakhis in The Complete Plays of Sophocles – A New Translation, Robert Bagg and James Scully trans, London: Harper Perennial, 2011.
VELLEMAN, J.D. Love as a Moral Emotion. Ethics, Vol. 109, No. 2, p. 338-374, 1999.
WILLIAMS, Bernard. A critique of utilitarianism. In: SMART, J.C.C. & WILLIAMS, B. Utilitarianism – For and Against. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.
WILLIAMS, Bernard. Persons, Character and Morality. In: WILLIAMs, Bernard. Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981a.
WILLIAMS, Bernard. Internal and External Reasons. In: WILLIAMs, Bernard. Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981b.
WILLIAMS, Bernard. Practical Necessity. In: WILLIAMs, Bernard. Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981c.
WILLIAMS, Bernard. Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame. In: WILLIAMS, Bernard. Making Sense of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995a.
WILLIAMS, Bernard. Moral Incapacity. In: WILLIAMS, Bernard. Making Sense of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995b.
WILLIAMS, Bernard. In the Beginning was the Deed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.
WILLIAMS, Bernard. Moral Responsibility and Political Freedom. In: WILLIAMS, Bernard. Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
WILLIAMS, Bernard. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. London: Routledge, 2011.
WILSON, Catherine. Moral Authority and the Limits of Philosophy. In: CHAPPELL, S.G. & ACKEREN, M.V. Ackeren (eds). Ethics Beyond the Limits. London: Routledge, 2018.

Downloads

Published

2022-10-28

Issue

Vol. 16 No. 2 (2022): REVISTA DIREITO MACKENZIE

Section

Papers

License

Copyright (c) 2022 Daniel Murata

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The copyright of the articles published in Mackenzie Law Review belongs to the authors, who grant Mackenzie Presbyterian University the rights of publication of the contents, and the assignment takes effect upon submission of the article, or work in similar form, to the electronic system of institutional publications. The journal reserves the right to make normative, orthographic, and grammatical alterations to the originals, with the aim of maintaining the cultured standard of the language, respecting, however, the style of the authors. The content reported and the opinions expressed by the authors of the articles are their exclusive responsibility.