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What are our duties or rights? How should we act? What are we responsible for? How do we determine the answers to these questions? Joseph Raz examines and explains the philosophical issues underlying these everyday quandaries. He explores the nature of normativity – namely, the fact that we believe and feel we should behave in certain ways, the reasoning behind certain beliefs and emotions, and various basic features of making decisions about what to do. He goes on to consider when we are responsible for our actions and omissions, and offers a novel account of responsibility. We can think of responsibility for unjustified actions or attitudes as a precondition of the blameworthiness of a person for an attitude or an action, or perhaps for a whole set of actions, intentions, or beliefs. Responsibility for justified actions or attitudes may be a precondition of praiseworthiness. Either way responsibility may point to further consequences of being justified or unjustified, rational or not. But crucially, responsibility attaches to people in a more holistic way. Some people are responsible for their actions, while others are not. In this way, Raz argues that the end is in the beginning, in understanding how people are subject to normativity, namely how it is that there are reasons addressed to them, and what is the meaning of that for our being in the world. ; https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/1272/thumbnail.jpg

Why democracy? Institutions of government and others must meet conditions of legitimacy. Why? and what are they? what are principles of legitimacy, like the principle of subsidiarity? and how does democracy fit in a theory of legitimacy? The paper surveys what it takes to be the seven most important advantages of democratic government: civil and political rights, more extensive opportunities for people to engage in public affairs, responsiveness to the expressed preferences of the people, stability, peaceful transfer of power, loyalty and solidarity. It then considers the role of legitimation in securing these advantages. These reflection lead to the question whether other regimes can secure the same advantages? And more importantly: given that all democratic regime rely also on non-democratic institutions, how are we to debate questions like how much democracy is needed? A question which arises within a single regime and in the interaction between several, say national and international, regimes.

The paper provides a broadly sketched argument about the importance of state-law and its limits, and the way current developments in international relations and international law tend to transform it without displacing its key position among legal systems in general. It argues that state law is (at least until present time) the most comprehensive law-based social organization within its domain. A standing which is manifested by acknowledged legitimacy by those subject to it (or many of them) and sovereignty, namely independence or external bodies. The paper argues that globalisation (broadly conceived) and attending developments in international greatly reduce the sovereignty of states, and transform its legitimate authority within its domain. None of this heralds the elimination of the state, but it does affect the character of states, and poses theories of law with new challenges, including the need to take more seriously legal systems that are not systems of state-law.

It is an honour to join you today in celebrating Professor Jerome Hall. Professor Hall's work was ahead of its time. I did not know him, but his independence of mind and his spirited devotion to scholarship were striking in all I heard and read. Professor Hall's fame was at its height when I was beginning my research into the philosophy of law. And his name stood out as among the most distinguished American jurisprudential scholars. It stood out for his good sense, balanced judgment, and strong-minded convictions. His Foundations of Jurisprudence is thoroughly resistant to fashion. It is an open-minded, undogmatic, and sympathetic exploration of a variety of intellectual trends and tendencies. His work on criminal law was an outstanding attempt at a thorough examination of a major branch of the law from a systematic and theoretical perspective. It set a standard for legal scholarship way above anything else accomplished in America at the time.