Ronald M. Dworkin — The Model of Rules

21 published claims from this book.

• A rule differs from an order, among other ways, by being normative, by setting a standard of behavior that has a call on its subject beyond the threat that may enforce it. A rule can never be…
• Austin grounds legal obligation in habitual obedience to a sovereign plus sanction.
• Austin’s simple command test ultimately proved inadequate in application.
• Can we say that we have, in principle at least, the same reasons for meeting our legal obligations that we have for meeting our moral obligations?
• Concepts of law and legal obligation must stay until shown illusory
• 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…
• Debunking legal concepts first requires a theory of how we actually use them
• Hart points out that Austin’s view that every rule is a general command obliterates the distinction between being obliged to do something and being obligated to do it. If one is bound by a rule he…
• In time, however, those who studied and tried to apply Austin’s model found it too simple. Many objections were raised, among which were two that seemed fundamental.
• 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…
• Law emerges when a secondary rule separates legal rules from social rules
• Legal coercion lacks a satisfactory account even in clear cases
• Legal nominalists treat law and obligation as myths to be discarded
• Legal obligation differs from mere coercion by threat of force
• Legal validity derives from normative authority, not from physical power alone.
• No single group holds ultimate sovereign control in modern states
• Nominalist legal theory reduces to an attack on mechanical jurisprudence
• Normative obligation differs fundamentally from being threatened into compliance.
• 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…
• The concepts of legal right and obligation, despite daily reliance, resist clear definition.
• 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…