Legal Validity: The Fabric of Justice

Description

Critical human interests are affected on a daily basis by appeal to past decisions deemed to be 'legally valid'. They include statutes, deportation orders, judgments, mortgage contracts, patents and wills. Through the technique of validity, lawyerly reasoning settles morally pressing matters in a way that largely bypasses moral argument. Legal philosophy has paid considerable attention to validity criteria, but it has neglected to explore validity's point: whether, and if so how, the pervasive technique of validity can contribute to a legal system's ability to realise justice and human rights. This book shows that validity can help a political community to foster justice precisely because validity does not primarily turn on moral considerations. Validity serves to both allocate, and limit, a distinct kind of power, a power that is key to forging valuable forms of enterprise and commitment in pursuit of individual and collective self-direction. By entrusting the capacity to decide to those who, in justice, ought to bear it, validity can enable persons and institutions to rally the resources and opportunities that only large-scale behavioural convergence can afford, thereby weaving a fabric of just relationships within the systemic framework of law.

Maris Koepcke is a Research Fellow at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, and a Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Barcelona.

There are a couple of wonderful things about this book. One is certainly the clearness of language and the general accessibility of her work. Another is her explicit focus on the technical aspect of the law, i.e., on the law as a specific social technique. This presents a welcome shift from a rather unfruitful focus on the law's essence to its functioning (note, not its function!), i.e., from what the law is to how exactly the law does what it does. -- Christoph Kletzer, Reader in Law, Kings College London * The American Journal of Jurisprudence * Koepcke's insightful, thorough, elegantly written, and rigorous treatment of legal validity deserves a careful reading. Indeed, it is my belief that anyone interested in fundamental legal questions will find Legal Validity: The Fabric of Justice a stimulating, instructive, and refreshing work. -- Stefano Bertea, School of Law, University of Leicester * Modern Law Review * [A]n extremely rich and significant book which displays the excellent analytical and philosophical gifts of its author. -- Sean Coyle * Jotwell *