Commands and Authoritative Legal Reasons
Commands and Authoritative Legal Reasons
This chapter first examines critically Bentham's account of what a command is and the curious theory of assertion, indeed of meaning, on which his analysis in part rests. It then shows that though Bentham's account of what a command is is in various ways defective, he does touch on certain elements embedded in the notion of command out of which the idea of an authoritative legal reason may be illuminatingly constructed. Thirdly and lastly it raises the question whether it is possible to bring the notion of an authoritative legal reason into the analysis of the relevant legal phenomenon without surrendering the conceptual separation of law and morality.
Keywords: theory of assertion, command, legal reason, law and morality, Bentham, sanctions
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