The Place of Coercion in Law

This Element states that meaningful disagreement about coerciveness of law is not possible without considering what makes a system legal.

Triantafyllos Gkouvas (Author)

9781009009638, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 13 April 2023

75 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 0.4 cm, 0.119 kg

The question of whether coercion is a necessary or contingent feature of governance by law is a historically complex aspect of a venerable 'modalist' trend in jurisprudential thinking. The nature of the relation between law and coercion has been elaborated by means of a variety of modally qualified accounts, all converging in a more or less committing response to whether the language, concept or essence of law as a system of governance necessarily entails the coercive character of this system. This Element remodels in non-modal terms the way in which legal philosophers can meaningfully disagree about the coercive character of governance by law. On this alternative model, there can be no meaningful disagreement about whether law is coercive without prior agreement on the contours of a theory of how law is made.

Introduction
1. A taxonomy for a modal question
2. Changing the question
3. Testing the new question.

Subject Areas: Jurisprudence & philosophy of law [LAB]