Academic

Green on Hume on Common Opinion and the Duty to Obey the Law

By Lawrence Solum

Leslie Green (University of Oxford - Faculty of Law) has posted 'Because Everyone Thinks So': Hume on Authority and Common Opinion on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Many legal and political philosophers think that common attitudes to authority impose powerful constraints on justification. In particular, they often think sceptical theories are objectionably inconsistent with the common view that everyone has a duty to obey the law. The most influential argument of this sort is due to David Hume, and it is his version that is here tested. The paper argues that common opinion is less probative than Hume thinks, and that his related objections to consent theory fail. There is no reason to think our common views of political authority are as Hume, and many others, think there are. There is no reason to exempt widely-held common views about moral matters from scrutiny in light of the genesis of those views. There is reason to think that, in politics as in religion, what Hume called 'superstitions' are quite common.

And a taste from the text:

Hume appeals to common opinion at two different points and in two different ways. He invokes it positively to establish the existence of an obligation to obey the law and then negatively to undermine one possible justification for that obligation. The argument goes like this:

(1) Everyone believes there is an obligation to obey.
(2) So everyone has an obligation to obey.
(3) But no one believes his obligation to obey rests on his own agreement.
(4) So everyone has an agreement-independent obligation to obey.

Hume appeals to common opinion at two different points and in two different ways. He invokes it positively to establish the existence of an obligation to obey the law and then negatively to undermine one possible justification for that obligation. The argument goes like this:Hume appeals to common opinion at two different points and in two different ways. He invokes it positively to establish the existence of an obligation to obey the law and then negatively to undermine one possible justification for that obligation. The argument goes like this: Hume appeals to common opinion at two different points and in two different ways. He invokes it positively to establish the existence of an obligation to obey the law and then negatively to undermine one possible justification for that obligation. The argument goes like this: Hume appeals to common opinion at two different points and in two different ways. He invokes it positively to establish the existence of an obligation to obey the law and then negatively to undermine one possible justification for that obligation. The argument goes like this: In the move from (1) to (2) we have the positive argument from common opinion, in the move from (3) to (4) the negative argument. Each consists of a factual premise?(1),(3)?and an inference to a normative conclusion?(2),(4). Both arguments are incomplete for, as Hume himself stressed, any sound normative argument needs at least one normative statement among its premises. So let us see how we might fill them out.

Highly recommended. Download it while its hot!

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on October 28, 2010 (boomark / email).