Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Incentives, Interests, and Inclinations: Legal Positivism Redefended*

Incentives, Interests, and Inclinations: Legal Positivism Redefended* INCENTIVES, INTERESTS, AND INCLINATIONS: LEGAL POSITIVISM REDEFENDED* MATTHEW H. KRAMER I. PRELIMINARY REMARKS My book In Defense of Legal Positivism presented a number of arguments in support of the legal-positivist insistence on the separability of law and morality. Those arguments were mostly independent of one another because they were focused on different ostensibly necessary connections between law and morality. Among them were some lines of reasoning which together maintained that often the officials who run vilely exploitative regimes will have strong prudential reasons to comply quite regularly with rule-of-law requirements (requirements compendiously summarized in Lon Fuller's principles of legality). With one of those lines of reasoning, I contended that frequently the aforementioned officials can best promote incentives for obedience to their evil mandates if—in keeping with Fuller's eighth principle of legality—they generally give effect to those mandates in accordance with the terms thereof. Should people who violate the mandates go unpenalized, or should people who abide by the mandates incur penalties, their incentives for conformity with the law will be weakened. Insofar as legal-governmental officials in a heinous regime are bent on attaining their odious objectives and consolidating their repressive sway, they are usually best advised to avoid any http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png American Journal of Jurisprudence Oxford University Press

Incentives, Interests, and Inclinations: Legal Positivism Redefended*

Kramer, Matthew H.
American Journal of Jurisprudence , Volume 51 (1) – Jan 1, 2006
Download PDF
14 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/oxford-university-press/incentives-interests-and-inclinations-legal-positivism-redefended-3LnJQs0SuG
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Copyright
© 2006 by The University of Notre Dame
ISSN
0065-8995
eISSN
2049-6494
DOI
10.1093/ajj/51.1.165
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

INCENTIVES, INTERESTS, AND INCLINATIONS: LEGAL POSITIVISM REDEFENDED* MATTHEW H. KRAMER I. PRELIMINARY REMARKS My book In Defense of Legal Positivism presented a number of arguments in support of the legal-positivist insistence on the separability of law and morality. Those arguments were mostly independent of one another because they were focused on different ostensibly necessary connections between law and morality. Among them were some lines of reasoning which together maintained that often the officials who run vilely exploitative regimes will have strong prudential reasons to comply quite regularly with rule-of-law requirements (requirements compendiously summarized in Lon Fuller's principles of legality). With one of those lines of reasoning, I contended that frequently the aforementioned officials can best promote incentives for obedience to their evil mandates if—in keeping with Fuller's eighth principle of legality—they generally give effect to those mandates in accordance with the terms thereof. Should people who violate the mandates go unpenalized, or should people who abide by the mandates incur penalties, their incentives for conformity with the law will be weakened. Insofar as legal-governmental officials in a heinous regime are bent on attaining their odious objectives and consolidating their repressive sway, they are usually best advised to avoid any

Journal

American Journal of Jurisprudence – Oxford University Press

Published: Jan 1, 2006

There are no references for this article.