Publication Date
1-2012
Journal
Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence
Abstract
Scott Shapiro offers an elaboration and defense of “legal positivism,” in which the official acceptance of a plan figures as the central explanatory notion. Rich in both ambition and insight, Legality casts an edifying new light on the structure of positive law and its officialdom. As a defense of positivism, however, it exhibits the odd feature that its main claims will prove quite acceptable to the natural lawyer. Perhaps this betokens – what many have begun to suspect anyway – that our usual tests for classifying legal theories (as positivist or not) are, in the present state of discussion, no longer credible. In any case, my hope in the following remarks is to suggest how certain ambiguities in Legality might easily be resolved in favor of Planning Natural Law. The Planning Theory of Law, in other words, is not proprietary to positivism.
Volume
25
First Page
219
Publisher
Western University, Cambridge University Press
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0841820900005427
Keywords
Shapiro, planning, positivism, natural law, forms of generality, utilitarianism, Kant, analytic jurisprudence, morality
Disciplines
Jurisprudence | Law | Natural Law
Recommended Citation
Martin J. Stone,
Planning Positivism and Planning Natural Law,
25
Can. J. L. & Jurisprudence
219
(2012).
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0841820900005427
Comments
3 Critical Notices