A Theory of Legal Obligation

by Stefano Bertea

Overview

The focus of this monograph lies in the construction of a theory of legal obligation, understanding it as a discrete notion with its own defining traits. In this work, Bertea specifically addresses the question: how should legal obligation be distinctively conceptualized? The conceptualization of legal obligation he defends in this work gradually emerges from a critical assessment of the theories of legal obligation that have been most influential in the contemporary legal-theoretical debate. Building on such critical analysis, Bertea's study purports to offer a novel and unconventional conceptualization of legal obligation, which is characterized as a law-engendered intersubjective reason for carrying out certain courses of conduct.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781108475105
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/03/2019
Pages:	376
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.98(d)

About the Author

Stefano Bertea is a Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft research fellow at the Goethe Universität and an Associate Professor at the University of Leicester. Previously, he was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie research fellow at the University of Edinburgh and at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, a visiting research fellow at the Am Max-Planck-Institut für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht, Germany, an Alexander von Humboldt research fellow at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, a senior research fellow at the Universiteit Antwerpen, a visiting professor at the Università degli Studi di Verona and at the Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia, and a visiting researcher at the Universiteit van Amsterdam.

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. The concept of obligation; 2. Contemporary approaches to legal obligations: a preliminary map; 3. The social-practice account; 4. The interpretivist account; 5. The conventionalist reason account; 6. The exclusionary reason account; 7. A revisionary Kantian conception; 8. Further dimensions of the revisionary Kantian conception; 9. The robust reason account; 10. The method of presuppositional interpretation; Conclusion.