The Metaphysics of Law: From Supervenience to Rational Justification

Abstract

The paper challenges the view that the metaphysical grounding of the law - in contrast to other domains - requires a special legal grounding relation, which involves the condition of rational determination. It is argued that rational determination ought to be extended to all metaphysical grounding, for otherwise general metaphysical grounding would easily deteriorate to supervenience, which has already been rejected as a plausible basis of the grounding relation by many a contemporary metaphysician. What is special about the metaphysics of law is not the general framework of grounding through rational determination, but the engagement in a rational reconstruction of legal facts in terms of their capacity to generate normative reasons for action.