Authority

Abstract

I have to this point in this book used the term “authority” and cognate terms, but I have said nothing about how to understand the concept of authority in the context of an enquiry into legal institutions and the sources of law. That might seem extraordinary, and even perverse, for the following reason. Legal counsel pleading a case or advising a client, judges and other legal officials holding judicial hearings and issuing opinions and verdicts, legal scholars commenting on and analyzing legal decisions—all habitually talk about relevant legislation, or relevant case law, as being the “authorities” for the substantive legal claims that they make. It is of the essence of law as an institutionalized normative system¹ that legal decision-making be based on grounds that are authoritative within the normative system. An account of the sources of law, which made no reference to the concept of authority, would seem therefore bizarrely incomplete.

For a legal system as an institutionalized normative system, see Raz 1975, chap. 4.