Table of Contents

I Law and Authority
1: Legitimate Authority
2: The Claims of Law
II The Nature of Law and Natural Law
3: Legal Positivism and the Sources of Law
4: Legal Reason, Sources, and Gaps
5: The Identity of Legal Systems
6: The Institutional Nature of Law
7: Kelsen's Theory of the Basic Norm
8: Legal Validity
III Internal Legal Values
9: The Functions of Law
10: Law and Value in Adjudication
11: The Rule of Law and its Virtue
IV Moral Attitudes to the Law
12: The Obligation to Obey the Law
13: Respect for Law
14: A Right to Dissent? I. Civil Disobedience
15: A Right to Dissent? II. Conscientious Objection
V Appendices
16: The Purity of the Pure Theory
17: The Argument from Justice

About the Author

Joseph Raz has been teaching in Oxford since 1972. He has held a chair in the philosophy of law since 1985, and has been a Research Professor since 2006. He has also held a professorship at Columbia University since 2002. He is a fellow of the British Academy and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.