Description

A full account of legitimate authority needs to disentangle roles of authority and relations of authority, either of which are capable of generating the standing to claim authority, while connecting that standing to the standards embodied in a Razian service conception. The seminar argues that both the existence and justification of authority turn upon normative practices of recognition, in which recognition of roles of authority and/or recognition in relations of authority generate and carry normativity between an authority and her subject(s). Recognition operates as a cog around which authority’s normativity and sociality are generated and transmitted, either inter-personally or institutionally. While authority as a normative power remains content–independent, recognition of the role of authority and/or recognition in relations of authority are generally reflexive to the content of an authority’s directives. This view enables us to explain how the content-independence of the authority power co-exists with the content-reflexivity of both the role and the relationship of authority.

About The Speaker

Nicole is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Auckland, and formerly from National University of Singapore. Nicole’s research field is the philosophy of law, including theories of authority and the jurisprudential challenges of interaction between state and non-state legal orders. Her publications include Authorities: Conflicts, Cooperation, and Transnational Legal Theory (OUP 2013) and, with Andrew Halpin, edited In Pursuit of Pluralist Jurisprudence (CUP 2017). Nicole has published a number of commissioned book chapters and her articles appear in leading law journals. Her current research includes work on a monograph, Officials, and a five-year project on Legalities: Jurisprudence without Borders, under a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship awarded by New Zealand’s Royal Society Te Apārangi. Her ongoing collaborative projects examine fiduciary theories of the state, the idea of office in public and private law, theories of recognition, and the theoretical foundations of indigenous laws.