Continuity and Complementarity in Legal Philosophy

Abstract

Abstract This final, concluding chapter of the book argues that indirectly evaluative legal philosophy (IELP) stands in relations of continuity and complementarity to the vital enterprise of subjecting law to appropriate moral evaluation and moral scrutiny. According to IELP, legal philosophers must make evaluative judgements in constructing and defending their accounts of law, but in the earlier stages of their inquiries, these judgements can and should be ‘indirectly evaluative’ in character, and legal philosophers should postpone subjecting law to moral evaluation and moral justification until a later stage. The chapter considers how we should understand the relations between IELP, and the later stage project of subjecting law to appropriate moral evaluation and moral scrutiny. It argues that the IELP approach picks out those features of law, and aspects of those features, which are important, significant, and relevant to law being held to, and being judged in terms of, appropriate moral standards. The chapter emphasizes that IELP does not stand in isolation from inquiries concerning the moral evaluation and criticism of law. Rather, IELP’s staged inquiry approach serves to focus and facilitate those latter enterprises as regards some of the important questions they should address.