Description
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Shared Authority: Courts and Legislatures in Legal Theory by Dr Dimitrios Kyritsis
This new book advances a fresh philosophical account of the relationship between the legislature and courts opposing the common conception of law in which it is legislatures that primarily create the law and courts that primarily apply it. This conception has eclectic affinities with legal positivism and although it may have been a helpful intellectual tool in the past it now increasingly generates more problems than it solves. For this reason the author argues legal philosophers are better off abandoning it. At the same time they are asked to dismantle the philosophical and doctrinal infrastructure that has been based on it and which has been hitherto largely unquestioned. In its place the book offers an alternative framework for understanding the role of courts and the legislature; a framework which is distinctly anti-positivist and which builds on Ronald Dworkins interpretive theory of law. But contrary to Dworkin it insists that legal duty is sensitive to the position one occupies in the project of governing; legal interpretation is not the solitary task of one super-judge but a collaborative task structured by principles of institutional morality such as separation of powers which impose a moral duty on participants to respect each others contributions. Moreover this collaborative task will often involve citizens taking an active role in their interaction with the law.show more