Concepts of law and legal obligation must stay until shown illusory

Evidence

Nevertheless, we do use the concepts of law and legal obligation, and we do suppose that society’s warrant to punish and coerce is written in that currency. It may be that when the details of this practice are laid bare, the concepts we do use will be shown to be as silly and as thick with illusion as those the nominalists invented. If so, then we shall have to find other ways to describe what we do, and either provide other justifications or change our practices. But until we have discovered this and made these adjustments, we cannot accept the nominalists’ premature invitation to turn our backs on the problems our present concepts provide. — Ronald M. Dworkin, The Model of Rules, 17

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gives a preliminary grip on what nominalism claims about legal concepts.
• XREF: connects to: Of course the suggestion that we stop talking about ‘the law’ and ‘legal obligation’ is mostly bluff. These concepts are too deeply cemented into the structure of our political practices-they cannot be given up like cigarettes or hats. Some of the nominalists have half-admitted this and said that the myths they condemn should be thought of as Platonic myths and retained to seduce the masses into order. This is perhaps not so cynical a suggestion as it seems; perhaps it is a covert hedging of a dubious bet.; Day in and day out we send people to jail, or take money away from them, or make them do things they do not want to do, under coercion of force, and we justify all of this by speaking of such persons as having broken the law or having failed to meet their legal obligations, or having interfered with other people’s legal rights. Even in clear cases (a bank robber or a willful breach of contract), when we are confident that someone had a legal obligation and broke it, we are not able to give a satisfactory account of what that means, or why that entitles the state to punish or coerce him. We may feel confident that what we are doing is proper, but until we can identify the principles we are following we cannot be sure that they are sufficient, or whether we are applying them consistently. In less clear cases, when the issue of whether an obligation has been broken is for some reason controversial, the pitch of these nagging questions rises, and our responsibility to find answers deepens.; Legal nominalists treat law and obligation as myths to be discarded — Ronald M. Dworkin, The Model of Rules, 11 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Debunking legal concepts first requires a theory of how we actually use them #expands (0.75) — Ronald M. Dworkin, The Model of Rules, 12
• Legal rules resting only on past authority deserve condemnation when their rationale has lapsed #qualifies (0.65) — Ruggero J. Aldisert, Agatha D. Aldisert, Logic for Lawyers- A Guide to Clear…, 1067
• The precautionary principle should override demands for exhaustive proof before acting #complicates (0.55) — Harriet A. Washington, A Terrible Thing to Waste, 1032