Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2003
Publication Information
48 Am. J. Juris. 107 (2003)
Abstract
Suppose we tried to think about law without trying first to describe it or to work out what the concept of it is. Suppose we asked instead whether, and if so why, and when, we-or more precisely each one of us-should favor introducing, having, endorsing, maintaining, complying with and enforcing it. We would be trying to think about law, about something not limited to our own time and town, but as something that people of any time and place of which we are aware would, as we can understand, have the same or similar need for and reasons to comply with as we have. But this subject matter we would be calling law from the outset because we would be beginning these reflections with an awareness, linguistic, experiential, and by report, of the law of our own time and town or country. Of that we could give some description, because we have some understanding of the sorts of things referred to in our neighborhood as parts of or related to the law (of our time and town, our law), and thus a conception or concept of that law, a conception which we could, if asked (or if reflecting), sketch out as a set of beliefs about an aspect of what's going on around us, beliefs which we're quite prepared to amend in the light of new information or of our own reflections about the consistency of these beliefs with each other and with other things we believe.
So the enquiry we are hypothesising, the enquiry about law, starts humbly enough as: Why have the sort of thing or things that get called the law and legal system, legal institutions, and processes and arrangements that we call the law of our time and town? "Why have it?" is of course elliptical for "Why, if at all, should we have it?" The enquiry is nakedly about whether and if so why I, the reflecting person doing the inquiring, should want there to be this sort of thing, and be willing to do what I can and should to support and comply with it (if I should). It arises in the course of reflection, deliberative reflection, on what I should really do, here and now, and with my life as far as I can envisage it.
Recommended Citation
John M. Finnis,
Law and What I Truly Should Decide,
48 Am. J. Juris. 107 (2003).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/870
Comments
Reprinted with permission of American Journal of Jurisprudence.