{"title":"Lawful, but not Really: The Dual Character of the Concept of Law","authors":"Brian Flanagan, Guilherme de Almeida","doi":"10.1007/s10982-024-09501-8","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Disagreement on law’s relationship to morality has long been driven by disagreement about our ordinary concept. Until recently, however, there had been no systematic investigation of lay intuitions. In this paper, we advance this nascent effort. Across two studies (N = 697), our findings reveal that most people consider law to be more than a matter of political circumstance alone. Contrary to the expectations of most contemporary philosophers, morality (both substantive and procedural) emerges as a key influence on judgments of legal validity: many people say that conduct prohibited by immoral statutes is <i>not</i> truly illegal, and that immoral conduct which was never explicitly prohibited <i>is</i> truly illegal. This suggests that people often treat law as a dual character concept that, like the concepts of scientist or of artist, features autonomous concrete and abstract dimensions.</p>","PeriodicalId":51702,"journal":{"name":"Law and Philosophy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8000,"publicationDate":"2024-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Law and Philosophy","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10982-024-09501-8","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ETHICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Disagreement on law’s relationship to morality has long been driven by disagreement about our ordinary concept. Until recently, however, there had been no systematic investigation of lay intuitions. In this paper, we advance this nascent effort. Across two studies (N = 697), our findings reveal that most people consider law to be more than a matter of political circumstance alone. Contrary to the expectations of most contemporary philosophers, morality (both substantive and procedural) emerges as a key influence on judgments of legal validity: many people say that conduct prohibited by immoral statutes is not truly illegal, and that immoral conduct which was never explicitly prohibited is truly illegal. This suggests that people often treat law as a dual character concept that, like the concepts of scientist or of artist, features autonomous concrete and abstract dimensions.
期刊介绍：
Law and Philosophy is a forum for the publication of work in law and philosophy which is of common interest to members of the two disciplines of jurisprudence and legal philosophy. It is open to all approaches in both fields and to work in any of the major legal traditions - common law, civil law, or the socialist tradition. The editors of Law and Philosophy encourage papers which exhibit philosophical reflection on the law informed by a knowledge of the law, and legal analysis informed by philosophical methods and principles.
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