Table of Contents

1: Introduction
I: Methodological Issues
2: Can there be a Theory of Law?
3: Two Views of the Nature of the Theory of Law: A Partial Comparison
II: Law, Authority and Morality
4: On the Nature of Law
5: The Problem of Authority: Revisiting the Service Conception
6: About Morality and the Nature of Law
7: Incorporation by Law
8: Reasoning with Rules
III: Interpretation
9: Why Interpret?
10: Interpretation Without Retrieval
11: Intention in Interpretation
12: Interpretation: Pluralism and Innovation
13: On the Authority and Interpretation of Constitutions: Some Preliminaries
Appendix
14: Postema on Law's Autonomy and Public Practical Reasons: A Critical Comment
Index

About the Author

Joseph Raz has been teaching in Oxford since 1972. He has held a chair in the philosophy of law since 1985, and has been a Research Professor since 2006. He has also held a professorship at Columbia University since 2002. He is a fellow of the British Academy and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reviews

...an indispensable contribution.
*Scott Hershovitz, Mind*

It will certainly be a much-discussed work for years to come...Raz's book is divided into four main parts, dealing with a wide range of issues in impressive depth...The significance of the book is the fact that it is, to my knowledge, the first of Raz's books that contains extensive discussion of methodological issues in jurisprudence and issues concerning interpretation
*Peter S.C. Chau, University of Oxford, Law and Philosophy Journal*

Raz's argument is clever, and because it shows how little the case for interpreting laws in accord with the intentions of those who made them depends on the nature of law, it is an indispensable contribution to a literature that is all to often the opposite.
*Scott Hershovitz, Mind*