Moral Aspects of Legal Theory
Essays on Law, Justice, and Political Responsibility

In this volume, Professor Lyons outlines his fundamental views about the nature of law and its relation to morality and justice.

David Lyons (Author)

9780521438353, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 29 January 1993

236 pages
23.7 x 15.9 x 2.4 cm, 0.482 kg

'A rich and diverse collection of important essays by one of this country's outstanding legal and political philosophers.' Jules Coleman, Yale Law School

David Lyons is one of the pre-eminent philosophers of law active in the United States. This volume comprises essays written over a period of twenty years in which Professor Lyons outlines his fundamental views about the nature of law and its relation to morality and justice. The underlying theme of the book is that a system of law has only a tenuous connection with morality and justice. Contrary to those legal theorists who maintain that no matter how bad the law of a community might be, strict conformity to existing law automatically dispenses 'formal' justice, Professor Lyons contends that the law must earn the respect that it demands. Moreover, we cannot, as some would suggest, interpret law in a value-neutral manner. Rather courts should interpret statutes, judicial precedents, and constitutional provisions in terms of values that would justify those laws. In this way officials can promote the justifiability of what they do to people in the name of law, and can help the law live up to its moral pretensions.

Preface
Acknowledgements
1. The internal morality of law
2. On formal justice
3. Legal formalism and instrumentalism - a pathological study
4. Moral aspects of legal theory
5. Formal justice and judicial precedent
6. Derivability, defensibility and the justification of judicial decisions
7. Constitutional interpretation and original meaning
8. A preface to constitutional theory
9. Basic rights and constitutional interpretation
10. Critical analysis and constructive interpretation.

Subject Areas: Social & political philosophy [HPS]