The Arbitration Conception of Authority, Law as Integrity and Normative Positivism

Abstract

In the first part of my essay I will argue that there is a strong relationship between our view of authority and the desirability of preemptive reasons. More specifically, we have strong reasons to regard legal norms as preemptive reasons only if we accept the service conception of authority. I suggest, however, that an alternative account of authority - which I shall call the arbitrator model - gives us a better account of what legal authority demands and how it works. In the second part of my essay I suggest that we should recast the debate between Dworkinian law as integrity and normative positivism as a debate between two different attempts to put flesh on the bones of the arbitrator model of authority.