Practical Reason and Legality: Instrumental Political Authority Without Exclusion

Abstract

In a morally non-ideal legal system, how can law bind its subjects? How can the fact of a norm’s legality make it the case that practical reason is (in fact) bound by that norm? Moreover, in such circumstances, what is the extent and character of law’s bindingness? I defend here an answer to these questions. I present a non-ideal theory of legality’s ability to produce binding reasons for action. It is not a descriptive account of law and its claims, it is a normative theory of legal reasoning for particular (though oftoccurring) social circumstances. The approach is, somewhat like Raz’s influential account, instrumental in character. Yet, it denies that the morally binding legal norms are, in whole or part, exclusionary reasons for the responsible subject. Law’s instrumentality must be given an alternative characterization.