The somatic state : the dialectics of law's morality

• Main Author: Sugrue, Seana Carole.
• Other Authors: Macdonald, Roderick A. (advisor)
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: McGill University 1999
• Subjects: Law > Philosophy.; Jurisprudence.
• Online Access: http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=36715

This dissertation offers a dialectical analysis of law creation insofar as legal rules and processes of social ordering are the products of interactions among agents inter se and between agents and legal institutions. This perspective demands that agents be regarded as contributing to the creation of law governing their own lives. The agents involved are not restricted to legal officials but include all persons with the capacity to exercise agency. This perspective of law creation is defended on the basis that the dialectical analysis permits a better comprehension of the relationship between law and morality. The normative defence of the dialectical approach is based on four inter-related arguments. First, law creation is an instantiation of moral practice for "full insiders", these being agents committed to norms and intrinsic goods. Secondly, the conflicts ensuing from the interactions of agents tend to imbue legal authority with some degree of legitimacy through normative compromises. Thirdly, as the agents involved in this process exercise political freedom, they have the capacity to exercise judgement in mediating between a commitment to institutional structures that facilitate moral practice and a commitment to moral reasoning that can counsel the instigation of change. Lastly, even in the case of "truncated insiders", agents who are not committed to moral reasoning, there are certain weak prudential checks that exist within the games they play inhibiting unfair processes and unjust outcomes.