Reason’s defense of law rests on its open discussability, not its content

Evidence

Then finally: “if there were nothing else against your law, this alone would be sufficient to condemn it, that your legislator forbade it to be discussed.” He was, he allows, a wise and ingenious man; he knew that his position could not be defended by reason, and he rightly calculated the assets which he had. But it is only by a misuse of language that we can give to his system the proud name of Law. “Does this shock you ? Then hear the true nature of Law. Law is reason in action. What is against reason is against law. But your legislator forbids reasoning, therefore what he says cannot be reasonable, neither can it be a law.” — R. W. Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle…, 558

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines law as reason in action, a key Enlightenment-era conception of legitimate authority.
• DEEPTHINKING: The argument that legal authority depends on open discussability — a claim whose whole force rests on equating reason with law while framing discussion itself as the test — rewards long sitting.
• XREF: connects to: Ethical canons permit lawyers to lobby only publicly by reasoned argument — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 285