Grounding Political Obligation

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter brings the agency-respect framework to bear on the question of political obligation, that is, whether we have a “content-independent obligation” to obey the law because it is the law. It first critically reviews familiar affirmative answers and finds some difficulties with all of them. In particular, while several succeed in showing that we often have content-dependent obligations to act in conformity with the law, they fail to establish a content-independent obligation to obey the law because it is the law. The chapter then argues that such a content-independent obligation can be successfully grounded in agency respect for people’s commitment to the rule of law. In doing so, the agency-respect view offers a defence of political obligation which, surprisingly, should appeal to anarchists too. On this view, obligations to obey the law are “pro tanto” and highly qualified. Moreover, what explains the bindingness of legal norms also explains the bindingness of informal social norms. From an agency-respect perspective, the law is therefore not morally special.