The Research On Source Of Legal Inner Authority In Plato’s The Laws

The authority of law includes the inner authority and external authority of law. The inner authority of law is inner persuasion based on the inherent quality of its own. It is the basis of people’s voluntary respect for the law even beliefs in law. The scholars had conducted unremitting exploration for the source of legal authority in the thousands of years since the beginning of law science. The Laws of Plato is considered to be the first western special works of law science, having important source and promoting role in the legal production and evolution on the whole western legal philosophy. The Laws almost covers all research areas of the legal philosophy. Its all-encompassing make the legal theory systemic and integrated, but also makes the readers feel difficult in understanding.The exploration for the source of legal authority can be regarded as a main line throughout The Law. With the main line, the Plato’s legal thought become clear, more organized and easy to understand. The internal authority of law is established, in The Laws, by Plato,through four aspects: the rationality of the law, the legitimacy of legal purpose, wisdom and virtue of legislators and the cultivation and production of legislators. The four aspects are interlocking and progressive, to form a strict logical framework: at first, the inner authority of law directly derives from the scientificity and rationality of law, specifically including the legal content of the “explanation”, accuracy, universal applicability and relative stability, objective pertinence, traditionality; secondly, the rationality of law derives from the legitimacy of legal purpose and the theory of human nature; thirdly, the legitimacy of the purpose and the requirement of the content according with the purpose makes legislators with wisdom and virtue necessary to make laws; finally, the wisdom and virtue of legislators is ensured by the gift of legislators, education of legislators in the city-state, testing in all his life and the age requirement of legislators. Placing the source of legal authority under such logic, has great powers of persuasion.