Author ORCID Identifier

Dan Priel: 0000-0002-8648-5760

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-12-2020

Keywords

naturalistic jurisprudence, jurisprudence, naturalism, legal positivism

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to provide an outline for a naturalistic approach to jurisprudence. It begins by arguing for certain reorientations away from certain questions currently preoccupy legal philosophers but should not. The question of the nature of law is, as currently understood, a misguided question. The questions of the metaphysics and the normativity of law, by contrast, are problematic in a different sense: It is not clear that law raises any special questions with respect to them. Following on that I offer a more positive agenda for naturalistic jurisprudence. Starting with methodology, I argue that there is no basis for the assumption that the only proper way of explaining law is in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions is unwarranted. Turning then to substance, I present a view I call “artificial law theory.” This view challenges the popular idea that law should match morality, arguing instead that law is an artificial creation whose aim is to improve and replace morality, due to the latter’s limitations as a means for regulating behavior. I focus in particular on the need for law to improve and replace morality due to technological change.

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