The mechanism of law’s normative force

The central problem of law is to explain the source of normativity. Why am I obliged to obey the commands of authority? In his article On the alleged problem of legal normativity, Frederick Schauer says that law certainly has normative force, but saying that law has normative force is not the same as saying that I have to obey the law just because it is the law. The reasons for obeying the law are extrinsic or extra-legal, which means that the law is not the source of its normative force. Joseph Raz, one of the most famous theorists of authority, sought to explain the normative force of law, how it manifests itself, and where it comes from. In doing so, he focused on the commands of political authority, which, through law, provides the subjects of its power with reasons to act. The result of Raz's work over many years is an impressive description of the mechanics of the provision of normative reasons by political authority, which he called the service conception of authority. In his argument, Raz proceeds from external (extra-legal) reasons to actions that people already have. He then uses them to justify the legitimacy of political authority and the normative force of its legal commands. Donald Regan responds to Raz in his texts Authority and Value Reflections on Raz's Morality of Freedom and Reasons, Authority, and the Meaning of Obey. Regan proposes his own much simpler conception of providing reasons by authority. He says his conception still performs the same explicative function as Raz's but is fundamentally simpler and does not deal with controversial notions such as the duty to obey the law. If Regan is correct, his conception should win over Raz's. In philosophy, more straightforward explanations win out, as they are generally more intuitive and less susceptible to attack from different philosophical positions, as they work with fewer counterfactual assumptions. In the presentation, I will compare the conception of mechanism of law’s normative force proposed by Joseph Raz with the one offered as an alternative by Donald Regan.