Table Of ContentLaw and Philosophy Library 117
Christoph Bezemek
Nicoletta Ladavac E ditors
The Force
of Law
Reaffirmed
Frederick Schauer Meets the Critics
Law and Philosophy Library
Volume 117
Series editors
Francisco J. Laporta, Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain
Frederick Schauer, University of Virginia, USA
Torben Spaak, Stockholm University, Sweden
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Aulis Aarnio, Secretary General of the Tampere Club, Finland
Humberto Ávila, University of São Paulo, Brazil
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Hugh Corder, University of Cape Town, South Africa
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Ernesto Garzón Valdés, Johannes Gutenberg Universitat, Germany
Riccaro Guastini, University of Genoa, Italy
Ho Hock Lai, National University of Singapore, Singapore
John Kleinig, City University of New York, USA
Claudio Michelon, University of Edinburgh, UK
Patricia Mindus, Uppsala University, Sweden
Yasutomo Morigiwa, Meiji University, Japan
Giovanni Battista Ratti, University of Genova, Italy; University of Girona, Spain
Wojchiech Sadurski, University of Sydney, Australia
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Robert S. Summers, Cornell University, USA
Michel Troper, Université de Paris Quest - Nanterre, France
Carl Wellman, Washington University, USA
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Christoph Bezemek Nicoletta Ladavac
(cid:129)
Editors
fi
The Force of Law Reaf rmed
Frederick Schauer Meets the Critics
123
Editors
Christoph Bezemek Nicoletta Ladavac
Institute for Austrian andEuropean Centred’EtudesdePhilosophie,dudroit,de
PublicLaw SociologiedudroitetdeThéoriedudroit
WU Thémis
Vienna Geneve
Austria Switzerland
ISSN 1572-4395 ISSN 2215-0315 (electronic)
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Preface
It is one of the peculiarities of legal science that the question as to its subject is
(quite heavily) disputed among scholars, “a situation”, as HLA Hart famously
remarked, “not paralleled in any other subject systematically studied as a separate
academic discipline”. And yet, for the longest time (or so it seems), at least it was
considered common ground that legal norms are essentially determined by their
force:whileitwasThomasHobbeswhomostfamouslypointedoutthat“thebonds
ofwordsaretooweaktobridlemen’sambition,avarice,anger,andotherPassions,
without the fear of some coercive Power”, the force of law was considered a
necessary element of legality not only among contractualist political thinkers such
as Hobbes, Spinoza and Locke. Following Jeremy Bentham, John Austin defined
lawasa“commandbacked bythreats”andthusplacedforcerightattheverycore
ofthedefinitionofthesubject,adefinitionlaterechoedbyHansKelsen’sandMax
Weber’s general depictions of legal systems.
It was Hart who raised doubts about the existence of a necessary connection of
law and coercion, by referring to the empowering, or more generally: enabling
character exhibited by some legal norms. Following and refining Hart’s argument,
scholarslikeScottShapirohavestartedtobuildacasetoexcludecoercionfromthe
essentialpropertiesofageneralconceptoflaw.FrederickSchauer,however,inhis
latest book, The Force of Law, made a powerful case to reclaim force, even if not
essential to the very concept of law, as essential to our understanding of the phe-
nomenon, arguing that “the fact that coercion is not all of law, nor definitional of
law, is not to say that it is none of law or an unimportant part of law”.
Itwastobeexpected,hisclaimswouldbeapprovedaswellasopposed.Thus,a
workshopwithintheframeworkoftheXXVIIWorldCongressoftheInternational
AssociationforthePhilosophyofLawandSocialPhilosophyinWashingtonD.C.,
inJuly2015,wasdedicatedtothetopic,togiveauthorandcriticsachancetomeet.
By giving an account of the proceedings of this workshop, this volume (which
includes two additional essays) puts the resilience of Schauer’s arguments to the
test. It provides a platform for academics from different legal traditions to address
the relation of law and force from distinct perspectives and for Schauer himself to
v
vi Preface
reply to their arguments, trying to contribute to the effort of determining whether
and to which extent law and force are related.
We would like to thank the editors of the Law and Philosophy Library for
including this volume in their series as well as Springer publishers: Neil Olivier
who supported this project from the beginning and Abirami Purushothaman who
diligently managed the editing process. Also we would like to thank Gisela
Kristoferitsch who diligently compiled the index to this volume.
We are indebted to the authors for their fascinating and insightful contributions
tothisvolume,inparticulartoLarsVinxwhofromtheveryoutsethelpedtoshape
the idea for the workshop, and we hope that this book may serve as a useful
addition to the discussion on the characteristics of this much-disputed subject of
jurisprudence.
Vienna, Austria Christoph Bezemek
Geneve, Switzerland Nicoletta Ladavac
March 2016
Contents
Introduction: Why (Ever) Define Law and How to Do It . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Isabel Trujillo
Bad for Good: Perspectives on Law and Force. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Christoph Bezemek
Coercion and the Normativity of Law: Some Critical
Remarks on Frederick Schauer’s The Force of Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Thomas Bustamante
Supporting The Force of Law: A Few Complementary
Arguments Against Essentialist Jurisprudence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Pierluigi Chiassoni
Coercion and Sanctions as Elements of Normative Systems. . . . . . . . . . 73
Nicoletta Ladavac
Forceful Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Christopher W. Morris
The Force of Law: Law and Coercion, Validity and Effectiveness,
and Synergy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Jorge Emilio Nunez
Does Law Without Force Exist? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Michael Potacs
Schauer on the Differentiation of Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Lars Vinx
Incomplete Responses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Frederick Schauer
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
vii
Contributors
Christoph Bezemek IOER, WU, Vienna, Austria
Thomas Bustamante Law Faculty, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo
Horizonte, Brazil; Funded Researcher, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento
Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), Brasília, Brazil
Pierluigi Chiassoni Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza, Istituto Tarello per la
Filosofia del Diritto/Tarello Institute for Legal Philosophy, Università di Genova,
Genoa, Italy
NicolettaLadavac DepartmentofPhilosophyofLaw,ThémisCentred'Etudesde
Philosophie, du droit, de Sociologie du droit et de Théorie du droit, Geneva,
Switzerland
Christopher W. Morris University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
Jorge Emilio Nunez Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
Michael Potacs IOER, WU, Vienna, Austria
Frederick Schauer David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law,
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA
IsabelTrujillo DepartmentofLegalPhilosophy,UniversityofPalermo,Palermo,
Italy
Lars Vinx Department of Philosophy, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey
ix
Bibliographical Note
In his latest book, “The Force of Law”, Frederick Schauer deals with an issue-the
coerciveforceoflaw-whichhasalreadybeenanalysedindepthinnumerousofhis
previous publications. The Force of Law thus provides a summary overview of a
line of argument which Schauer has expounded and developed over a number of
years. In one of the first articles, Imposing Rules, which was published in 2005,
Schauer stressed that a rule-based governance requires both a rule imposer and a
rule subject, but that the role which deserves most attention is that of the rule
subject, since some actions are harmful to others and it is in the field of such acts
that questions about the morality and rationality of rule imposition become
important, i.e. how a person or an institution exercises control over agentswho do
not follow rules and in situations in which harm is caused.
Theissueoflawandsanctions asthecoercive force thatischaracteristicoflaw
itselfwaspreviouslybroachedbySchauerinthearticleWasAustinRightAfterAll?
publishedin2010,inwhichhetoucheduponmostoftheissueswhichhewouldgo
on to address in The Force of Law. The arguments are as follows: that legal
obligation (enforced with sanctions) is one of the core concepts of jurisprudence,
with a threat of sanctions giving the law its normative force and providingthe law
with its authority, consequently creating the very idea of legal obligation; that
law-creating powers (duty-imposing and power-conferring) are not merely con-
cerned with prohibitions and requirements, but also with facilitating permissive or
optional conduct; if and to what extent sanctions and force are a necessary pre-
requisite for law; and whether law could exist without sanctions. Comparing the
ideas of Bentham, Austin and Hart-authors to whom Schauer makes continuous
reference-he argues that the notion of a duty or obligation is similar to a statement
of deontic content, a statement as to what conduct is mandated if we presuppose
someruleorsystemofrules.Furthermore,ifweconsiderhowlawisdifferentfrom
other rule systems, then the sanctions provided for by law may serve this distin-
guishing function, and a sanction-free account of law will be an account that does
not fit the facts of law and cannot be ignored.
xi
