Raz on Authority: The Normal Justification Thesis

The Quote

"The normal way to establish that a person has authority over another person involves showing that the alleged subject is likely better to comply with reasons which apply to him anyway if he accepts the directives of the alleged authority as authoritatively binding and tries to follow them."

— Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (1986)

Historical Context

Joseph Raz published The Morality of Freedom in 1986, at a time when the philosophy of law and political philosophy were undergoing a period of intense theoretical development. The debate between legal positivism and natural law theory had been reshaped by the work of H. L. A. Hart and Ronald Dworkin, and the question of the nature and justification of political authority was at the center of both fields. Raz's book was a comprehensive contribution to these debates, developing a systematic theory of authority, autonomy, and the relationship between law and morality.

The normal justification thesis, as the passage quoted here has come to be known, is the centerpiece of Raz's "service conception" of authority. The thesis is a response to the philosophical problem of authority: how can it be morally legitimate for one person to have the power to impose obligations on another? The traditional answer, in the social contract tradition, was that authority is legitimate when it is based on the consent of the governed. Raz's answer is different: authority is legitimate when it serves the governed by helping them to comply with the reasons that already apply to them. The authority does not create new reasons out of nothing but provides a more effective way of responding to the reasons that the subject already has.

The context of the late twentieth century is important for understanding the significance of Raz's argument. The liberal tradition had been criticized by communitarians for its emphasis on individual autonomy and its neglect of the social conditions of freedom. Raz's theory of authority was a response to these criticisms that remained within the liberal framework: it defended the value of personal autonomy while acknowledging that autonomy can only be realized in a social context that provides the necessary options and opportunities.

Philosophical Interpretation

The normal justification thesis is a claim about the conditions under which authority is legitimate. The thesis has three components. The first is the "normal" condition: the justification of authority does not require extraordinary circumstances but is based on a normal, everyday consideration — that the subject is likely to do better at following the reasons that apply to him or her by accepting the authority's directives. The second is the "capacity" condition: the authority must be more reliable than the subject at identifying and responding to the reasons that apply to the subject. The third is the "compliance" condition: the subject must accept the authority's directives as "authoritatively binding" — that is, as preempting the subject's own assessment of the reasons.

The thesis is a departure from the consent-based theories of authority that dominated the liberal tradition. For Raz, the legitimacy of authority does not depend on the actual consent of the governed but on the service that the authority provides. If the authority helps the subject to comply with the reasons that apply to the subject, then the authority is legitimate — whether or not the subject has consented to it. This is a "service conception" because the authority is conceived as a servant of the governed, helping them to achieve what they already have reason to achieve.

The obligation to obey legitimate authority, for Raz, is a special kind of obligation. The authority's directives are "preemptive reasons" — reasons that replace the underlying reasons on which they are based. When a legitimate authority issues a directive, the subject is not supposed to weigh the directive against the underlying reasons but to treat the directive as itself a reason for action that excludes the underlying reasons. This is the "preemption thesis," and it is what distinguishes the authority of a legitimate government from the mere advice of an expert. An expert's advice gives the subject a reason to believe something; an authority's directive gives the subject a reason to act.

Related Concepts

Raz's theory of authority is one of the most influential contributions to the philosophy of law and political philosophy in the late twentieth century. The normal justification thesis has been the subject of extensive debate, with critics arguing that it cannot account for the role of democratic procedures in legitimating authority, that it is too permissive in the kinds of authority it can justify, and that it cannot explain the obligation to obey the law in cases where the law is not a reliable guide to the reasons that apply to the subject.

The debate about authority and legitimacy connects to the broader question of the nature of law and the grounds of political obligation. Raz's service conception of authority is a contribution to the legal positivist tradition, which holds that the existence and content of law depend on social facts rather than on moral considerations. But Raz's positivism is a "soft" or "inclusive" positivism, which allows that moral considerations may be incorporated into the criteria of legal validity through the conventions of the particular legal system.

Sources

1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Joseph Raz." Covers Raz's contributions to the philosophy of law, political philosophy, and practical reason.
2. Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). The primary source of the quoted passage.
3. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Joseph Raz: The Service Conception of Authority." An accessible overview of Raz's theory of authority and its significance.