The Authority of the State

The Authority of the State

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Available in the Osgoode Hall Law School Library

Description

The modern state claims supreme authority over the lives of all its citizens. Drawing together political philosophy, jurisprudence, and public choice theory, this book forces the reader to reconsider some basic assumptions about the authority of the state.

Various popular and influential theories - conventionalism, contractarianism, and communitarianism - are assessed by the author and found to fail. Leslie Green argues that only the consent of the governed can justify the state's claims to authority. While he denies that there is a general obligation to obey the law, he nonetheless rejects philosophical anarchism and defends civility - the willingness to tolerate some imperfection in institutions - as a political virtue.

ISBN

0198273134

Publication Date

1990

Publisher

Clarendon Press

City

Oxford, United Kingdom

Keywords

Authority; State, The

Comments

Bibliographic Citation
Green, Leslie. The Authority of the State. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. Print.

The Authority of the State

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