This book offers a βgenealogicalβ explanation of lawβs normativity. The term βgenealogicalβ conveys a commitment to a non-metaphysical type of enquiry. While it explains how law, as a normative phenomenon, comes about, it does not seek to ground lawβs normativity in anything but the context of social interaction giving rise to it.
Legal normativity is brought about on a daily basis. Whether in revolutionary circumstances or in the quotidian need for judges, lawmakers or citizens to balance lawβs demands with those of morality or prudence, our ability to bind ourselves through law ultimately depends on our capacity to articulate a better way of living together, and to commit ourselves to it. These efforts of assessment and articulation depend, in turn, on our conception of normative agency. Assert the need to trace the truth of ethical judgments to some independent moral βfactsβ conditioning their objectivity, and you will get a different understanding of what it is we are doing when we dispute lawβs authority in the name of moral values. Tracing the truth of moral judgements back to our own social practices not only affects the nature of disagreement; it also dramatically increases our responsibility when, as lawmakers, judges, or citizens we βtake the law into our own handsβ and confront it with our moral expectations.