Cristina Redondo (Genova): What is an inquiry into the nature of law? A debate on Raz's metaphysical approach

María Cristina Redondo is a professor at the Law department at the University of Genova, and will be giving the ninth paper of Trinity term: "What is an inquiry into the nature of law? A debate on Raz's metaphysical approach".

Abstract:

The text I will discuss in this seminar is part of a broader article on a debate between J. Raz, R. Alexy and E. Bulygin on Raz's article 'Can there be a theory of law'. Such a part is essentially a reflection on Joseph Raz's idea that the main task of legal theory is to explain the nature of law. My first aim is to examine the relationship between an explanation of the nature or essential properties of law and an explanation or analysis of the concept of law. In this context, I will make a negative argument against the claim of various scholars that the study of the essential properties of law requires or amounts to some kind of conceptual analysis. In doing so, I will address some arguments in favour of such a thesis and try to argue that we should not take Raz's proposal as a proposal for a conceptual analysis if we are to understand it. In particular, it cannot be interpreted as an example of an immodest conceptual analysis of the concept of law.

My second aim is to find out how we should understand Raz's proposal. In this case, I will argue in favour of the idea that the main task that Raz ascribes to legal theory is a kind of metaphysical explanation that could be addressed using some of the tools proposed by contemporary analytic metaphysics. In particular, I will explore the possibility that the explanatory relation between law and its essential properties can be understood as a relation of grounding. In this context, and bearing in mind that Joseph Raz's theory is a positivist theory of law, I will first address the question of what kind of research Raz's proposal is and whether the metaphysical grounding relation between the existence of a legal system or norm and the more fundamental properties on which they depend can in turn be conceived as a constitutive-conceptual relation. Secondly, I will deal with the question of what the 'relata' of metaphysical explanation are. In particular, this involves the necessary distinction between the explanation of the existence and the content of law. Finally, I will try to give a concrete example of a metaphysical explanation within the framework of Joseph Raz's theory in order to show that such an explanation confirms the points I have tried to emphasise.

This seminar takes place in Massey Room, at Balliol College, University of Oxford (Broad St, Oxford OX1 3BJ) at 5:00pm on Thursday 12 June.

This event is open to anyone. No registration needed.

Pre-reading is desirable and strongly suggested, but not a requirement to attend.

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