The Authority of the State - Hardcover

Green, Leslie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198249268 ISBN 13: 9780198249269

Publisher: Clarendon Press, 1988

Synopsis

An investigation of the nature of authority and the character of the state. The author draws together political philosophy, jurisprudence and public choice theory, to explain authority and evaluate whether the state's claim to influence over its citizens is justified. Green argues that only the consent of the governed can justify the state's claims to authority, and while he denies that there is a general obligation to obey the law, he none the less rejects philosophical anarchism and defends civility as a political virtue. The book also assesses various theories such as conventionalism, contractarianism and communitarianism. It is intended to be of interest to third year undergraduates and post-graduate students.

About this title

Review:

'The Authority of the State is a much more powerful and focused discussion of political obligation than most of what we see in the philosophical literature. Leslie Green knows political science as well as jurisprudence and he is in a position to evaluate in detail the claims that states and legal systems actually make, as opposed to the claims that philsophers attribute to them in their hypothetical examples. And so the book's insistence on the importance of consent and its hesitations about authority and obligation are more soundly based and much more interesting.' Jeremy Waldron, University Professor, NYU Law School

About the Author:

Leslie Green is an Associate Professor of Philosophy, Osgoode Hall Law School at York University, Toronto.

About this edition

• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0198249268
• ISBN 13: 9780198249269
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288