Overview

This book investigates law's interaction with practical reasons. What difference can legal requirements-e.g. traffic rules, tax laws, or work safety regulations-make to normative reasons relevant to our action? Do they give reasons for action that should be weighed among all other reasons? Or can they, instead, exclude and take the place of some other reasons? The book critically examines some of the existing answers and puts forward an alternative understanding of law's interaction with practical reasons. At the outset, two competing positions are pitted against each other: Joseph Raz's view that (legitimate) legal authorities have pre-emptive force, namely that they give reasons for action that exclude some other reasons; and an antithesis, according to which law-making institutions (even those that meet prerequisites of legitimacy) can at most provide us with reasons that compete in weight with opposing reasons for action. These two positions are examined from several perspectives, such as justified disobedience cases, law's conduct-guiding function in contexts of bounded rationality, and the phenomenology associated with authority. It is found that, although each of the above positions offers insight into the conundrum at hand, both suffer from significant flaws. These observations form the basis on which an alternative position is put forward and defended. According to this position, the existence of a reasonably just and well-functioning legal system constitutes a reason that fits neither into a model of ordinary reasons for action nor into a pre-emptive paradigm-it constitutes a reason to adopt an (overridable) disposition that inclines its possessor towards compliance with the system's requirements. Runner-up for the Peter Birks Book Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship 2019.

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9780199659876

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Rigorous, thorough, accessible, and a pleasure to read a must for students, researchers and practitioners newly engaging with critical global health and a welcome up-to-date synthesis for those of us who have been working, teaching, and advocating around globalization and health for years. -- Christina Zarowsky, Professor, cole de sant publique de l'Universit de Montr al An insightful analysis that ranges widely across time and space, shining a light on the winners and losers in a globalizing world. Their call for a new social movement that can harness the forces of globalization for the common good is a challenge to us all. --Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine In this tour de force, Labont and Ruckert provide a comprehensive and critical view on major issues in globalisation such as trade and investment liberalization, labour migration, and neoliberalism. A must-read for all those working and studying global health. --Devi Sridhar, Professor of Global Health, University of Edinburgh

Rigorous, thorough, accessible, and a pleasure to readaa must for students, researchers and practitioners newly engaging with critical global health and a welcome up-to-date synthesis for those of us who have been working, teaching, and advocating around globalization and health for years. -- Christina Zarowsky, Professor, Ecole de sante publique de l'Universite de Montreal An insightful analysis that ranges widely across time and space, shining a light on the winners and losers in a globalizing world. Their call for a new social movement that can harness the forces of globalization for the common good is a challenge to us all. --Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine In this tour de force, Labonte and Ruckert provide a comprehensive and critical view on major issues in globalisation such as trade and investment liberalization, labour migration, and neoliberalism. A must-read for all those working and studying global health. --Devi Sridhar, Professor of Global Health, University of Edinburgh

Author Information

Noam Gur is a lecturer in law at Queen Mary University of London. He specializes in jurisprudence and legal theory, and has further research interests in political theory and in tort law. He previously held a post-doctoral position at the University of Oxford, where he also earned his doctorate and master's degrees in law. He obtained his first degree in law from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, after which he clerked at the Supreme Court of Israel and worked as a lawyer in a private firm.

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