Conventions and The Foundations of Law

  • Gerald J. Postema
Chapter
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Abstract

According to Jules Coleman, “law is made possible by an interdependent convergence of behavior and attitude: what we might think of as an ‘agreement’ among individuals expressed in a social or conventional rule” (Coleman 1998a, 383). Some version of this “conventionality thesis” has been a key component of Hart’s jurisprudential legacy since the 1980s. Few Anglo-American legal philosophers at end of the century denied that law has social foundations or that it is intimately linked to social practice. The conventionality thesis in its refined post-Hartian form, however, makes a stronger and more sharply focused claim: that essential to law is a social practice, primarily among officials, regarding law’s formal foundations (its “rule of recognition”), that is distinctively conventional, and in this fact lies a full explanation of the conditions of the existence and the distinctive normativity of law. This complex claim has been the focus of debate for nearly three decades in Anglo-American legal philosophy. This chapter chronicles this debate.

Keywords

Legal Rule Social Rule Conventional Practice Legal Practice Official Practice 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Authors and Affiliations

  • Gerald J. Postema
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of PhilosophyUniversity of North CarolinaChapel Hill NorthUSA

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