1. To dismiss the idea that conceptual clarification can make a contribution towards the ‘peaceful resolution of political disagreements’ as ‘very cosy and rather silly’ is reminiscent of some socialist objections to moral debate and exhortation as ineffectual irrelevances ( Eccleshall, Bob ‘Reclaiming Right’, Radical Philosophy, Autumn 1983, p 36 Google Scholar). Eccleshall is wrong to say that in arguing for a rôle for philosophy in dispute resolution I assume that ‘social antagonisms emanate from an inability to communicate’ but I do argue that an ability to communicate may contribute to their non-violent resolution.

2. Despite Eccleshall op cit, p 37; see Campbell, T. D. ‘The Normative Fallacy’, Phil Q, 1970, pp 368–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. In The Left and Rights: a conceptual analysis of the idea of socialist rights (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983).

4. Paul Hirst argues forcibly that my effort to extricate law from sanctions is unsuccessful because I equate sanctions with particular forms of punitive response whereas what is essential to law is that it is the dominant set of rules in a society which individuals ‘must’ follow, a necessity which diminishes their personal freedom even if the ‘sanctions’ which follow non-compliance are hortatory rather than punitive. It is an important stage in the argument to obtain agreement that law has no necessary connection with coercion as normally understood as a matter of the use or threat of use of force. Accepting that law presents difficulties for the achievement of total spontaneity (which I discuss in chapter 3 under the heading ‘The Legalism of Rights’) it does not seem that the ‘necessity’ involved in the restriction on individual need be regarded as a form of sanction, since it is intelligible to hypothesise a group of individuals agreeing on the desirability of having rules which are mandatory in that individuals cannot decide for themselves whether or not to follow these rules and superior in that individuals must follow these rules even if they clash with other rules. The idea of having such a system of governing social interactions does not in itself require the notion of a sanction to explain the type of necessity involved. It is not therefore the case that the autonomous individual can only be obliged to follow rules which on the Kantian formula of universalisability he himself wills for there may be rules which he is prepared to accept as mandatory even if he does not personally endorse them as the rules he would wish to see universalised. We can therefore understand the ‘must’ of law in terms of a morally neutral device which is best explicated by saying that there can be law when there is a set of rules which is identified as those which arc non-optional in a given territory. The idea of non-optionality is perfectly intelligible when operating in any rule-governed activity and is sufficient to constitute law when we add to it that the set of rules which have a legal ‘must’ are those which are identified as having priority, standardly within a certain geographical area. That is the very idea of law. This form of necessity is compatible with autonomy insofar as the autonomous individual can see reasons why he should accept mandatory rules even if he disagrees with their substance, as when, for instance, he sees the advantage of having a bad agreed rule over no rule at all. (See Hirst ‘Socialist Legality: a Critique of Tom Campbell's Left and Rights’, unpublished paper, p 24: ‘The point is that, however inefficacicous such claims are coercive in the sense that they purport to be applicable to individuals and corporate bodies irrespective of any judgments of appropriateness the latter may make. They are externally binding and not merely accepted by those subject to them as a rule which morally or rationally governs their activities’).

5. ‘Rights, Socialism and Liberalism’ infra, pp 1–9.

6. Op cit.

7. Law left right behind’, New South Wales Law Review, in press.

8. Op cit.

9. p 2.

10. Left and Rights, p 9.

11. Markovits, Inga, ‘Socialist vs Bourgeois Rights — An East-West German Comparison’ (1978) 45 U Chi LR 612–636 Google Scholar.

12. Op cit, p 1. Would Simmonds wish to deny that a dominant strand in traditional liberalism, as exemplified, for instance, by Adam Smith, is the central role of justified self-preference, no doubt limited by rules against harming others in specified ways?.

13. Op cit, p 4.

14. ‘Children's Rights: a Test-Case for Theories of Right’ in Legal Right and Social Democracy (Clarendon Press, 1982), pp 154–66.

15. See Campbell op cit, pp 88f.

16. See Campbell op cit, chapter 7.

17. Thus Bankowski outlines the liberal view of rights on Dworkinian lines as political trumps or side-constraints which make rights an absolute bar to certain policies and methods of organising society (op cit, p 6) — Bankowski argues that by allowing the principle of utility to determine what rights there should be ‘everything seems to have been dissolved in a utilitarian stew’ (p 7).

18. See Campbell op cit, pp 124f and ‘Humanity before Justice’, (1974) 4 B J Pol Sc 1–16.

19. Simmonds op cit, p 4ff. In a similar vein Bankowski argues that positive rights have no bite in themselves since rules require purposive interpretation which in the end relies on the consensus view of the legal elite (op cit, pp 11ff).

20. Op cit, p 7.

21. Op cit, p 6.