Description

The widespread antipathy to Hart’s description of international law as a simple or primitive social order, one that lacks a rule of recognition and therefore does not qualify as a legal system, rests on two misunderstandings. First, the absence of a division of labor in identifying, altering, applying, and enforcing law is equally, if not more, central to Hart’s understanding of what makes a society primitive than is the absence of any secondary rules at all. Second, it is primarily in terms of the presence of such a division of labor and the implications it has for the ontology of law that Hart understands the idea of a legal system, and the ideas of a rule of recognition and legal validity that accompany it. Interpreted in light of these claims, Hart’s characterization of international law is quite plausible; moreover, embracing it may well provide both theoretical and moral benefits.

About The Speaker

Dr. David Lefkowitz specializes in legal and political philosophy. Among the courses he teaches on a semi-regular basis are Philosophy of Law, Ethics and International Affairs, Philosophical Problems in Law and Society (with a focus on criminal law) and, for the PPEL Program, Theory and Public Policy (with a focus on climate change) and the PPEL Capstone (with a focus on normative theory and international law).

Dr. Lefkowitz’s research interests span three overlapping areas: (1) the morality of obedience and disobedience to law (e.g. the basis, if any, of a moral duty to obey the law, the moral justifiability of civil disobedience, the just treatment of conscientious objectors); (2) analytical and normative issues in international law (e.g. the nature of customary international law, the legitimacy of international law, the existence (or not) of an international rule of law and its implications); and (3) substantive moral questions in the conduct of international affairs (e.g. the morality of secession, the just conduct of war).