15 August 2012

NOTICE: Finnis on the Philosophy of Law (what else?)

The natural lawyer and legal philosopher John Finnis (Oxford/Notre Dame) has just published 'What is the Philosophy of Law?' in (2012) 1 Rivista di Filosofia del Diritto 67, part of a number of interesting papers on the topic. The abstract reads:

Copertina The philosophy of law is not separate from but dependent upon ethics and political philosophy, which it extends by that attention to the past (of sources, constitutions, contracts, acquired rights, etc.) which is characteristic of juridical thought for reasons articulated by the philosophy of law. Positivism is legitimate only as a thesis of, or topic within, natural law theory, which adequately incorporates it but remains transparently engaged with the ethical and political issues and challenges both perennial and peculiar to this age. The paper concludes by proposing a task for legal philosophy, in light of the fact that legal systems are not simply sets of norms.

The paper is available in the Notre Dame Legal Studies and Oxford Legal Studies Research series on SSRN.

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