How the Law Guides

Joshua Pike

Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 2021, vol. 41, issue 1, 169-191

Abstract: The concept of guidance lies at the heart of normativity. It follows, according to the common view that the law necessarily claims to be normative, that guidance must play a central role in understanding the law. This article focuses on two questions about guidance: (i) what distinguishes normative guidance from non-normative guidance; and (ii) what is involved in using something as a reason and as a norm so that we are normatively guided by that something. In doing so, two features of how the law guides emerge: first, that despite the involvement of reasons, our relationship with the law is sometimes better characterised as non-normative guidance rather than normative guidance; and second, that it is a conceptual feature of what it is to use a legal directive as a norm that further practical reasoning is required to figure out what action that directive requires, independently of that directive’s vagueness or indeterminacy.

Keywords: normative guidance; physical guidance; practical reasoning; legal norms; authority; normativity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:oxjlsj:v:41:y:2021:i:1:p:169-191.

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