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  1. Home
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  3. Moral Aspects of Legal Theory
  • Cited by 23
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
December 2009
Print publication year:
1993
Online ISBN:
9780511624667
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511624667
Subjects:
Law: General Interest, Law, Ethics, Philosophy
Information

Book description

David Lyons is one of the pre-eminent philosophers of law active in the United States. This volume comprises essays written over a period of twenty years in which Professor Lyons outlines his fundamental views about the nature of law and its relation to morality and justice. The underlying theme of the book is that a system of law has only a tenuous connection with morality and justice. Contrary to those legal theorists who maintain that no matter how bad the law of a community might be, strict conformity to existing law automatically dispenses 'formal' justice, Professor Lyons contends that the law must earn the respect that it demands. Moreover, we cannot, as some would suggest, interpret law in a value-neutral manner. Rather courts should interpret statutes, judicial precedents, and constitutional provisions in terms of values that would justify those laws. In this way officials can promote the justifiability of what they do to people in the name of law, and can help the law live up to its moral pretensions.

Reviews

‘A rich and diverse collection of important essays by one of this country’s outstanding legal and political philosophers.’

Jules Coleman - Yale Law School

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