Lopez-Lorenzo, M-J; (2017) Truth and knowledge in law: the integration challenge. Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London).

Preview

Text PhD_MJLL.pdf - Submitted Version Download (723kB) | Preview

Abstract

There is a challenge that needs to be addressed in general jurisprudence, and the challenge I have in mind is composed of two questions: one of these raises a metaphysical issue about what makes it the case that the law requires what it does—call that the constitutive question; the other question raises an epistemological issue about what it is to know what the law requires in the instant case—call that the problem of legal knowledge. Although these questions raise different issues that need to be addressed by general theories of the nature of law, my view is that they are best regarded as two facets of a larger problem: how, if at all, can we reconcile a plausible account of what makes it the case that the law requires what it does with a credible account of what it is to know what the law requires on a particular issue? That, in a nutshell, is the integration challenge confronting the legal domain, and my discussion of it proceeds as follows: I shall begin, in Chapter II, by introducing the integration challenge for the legal domain and demonstrating why that challenge merits scrutiny in philosophical discussions of the nature of law; I shall then establish, in Chapters III-IV, the programme of legal dispositionalism and its attendant objectivity, relevance, and epistemological conditions that constrain adequate solutions to this pressing theoretical problem; as I explain in Chapter V, the problematic is confounded here in that our two leading theories of the nature of law, the orthodox view and the model of principle, fail to negotiate those constraints satisfactorily in their respective accounts of what law is and how it works; so, in Chapter VI, I shall review the importance of taking up our challenge in earnest.

Download activity - last month

Export as CSVXMLJSON

Download activity - last 12 months

Export as CSVJSONXML

Downloads by country - last 12 months

Export as CSVXMLJSON

Archive Staff Only

View Item