Justification Of Law: Coherence Or Authority

The Dworkin-Raz debate is the new round of argument on the relationship betweenlaw and morality. Dworkin’s legal coherence theory is proposed to construct his idealconcept of law, the Law as Integrity. It holds that the propositions of law should bejustified on the basis of morality. Morality is the truth conditions of propositions of law.Therefore, when the judges identify the legal rights or obligations, on the purpose ofpursuing the coherence between the law and morality, he should secure the bestinterpretation which is best justified on political morality through constructiveinterpretation. To the contrary, the Raz proposes the source thesis that the legal rights andobligations are fully determined by the sources. Raz justifies the source thesis on the basisof the argument from authority. The core of this argument is the service conception ofauthority. The service function of authority means authoritative directives are based ondependent reasons and they can provide people with judgments which are better tocomply with the right reasons. Also, the service function of authority makes anyauthoritative directive binding on subjects have two non-moral conditions of ability,which make the existence and contents of authoritative directives are independent fromthe moral reasons and justifications. The law necessarily claims legitimate authority andis capable of being authority. The authoritative nature of law makes its existenceindependent from morality. Therefore, the difference between Dworkin’s coherence thesisand Raz’s source thesis is that whether the propositions of law should be justified on thebasis of morality. From the view of Raz, Dworkin’s coherence thesis could not reflect thenature of law because coherence is not the prerequisite for the law as authority to be validand legitimate. However, in Dworkin’s opinion, Raz’s argument from authority could notbe justified so that his source thesis based on that could not be justified. Although theydirectly criticize each other’s main claims, they did not try to or could not undermine theopponent’s core argument. From the perspective of legal practice, the coherence-pursuingjustification model of laws’ proposition proposed by Dworkin is unachievable, while thesubject-to–authority justification model is acceptable because of the legality it pursues,even if it is not based on morality.