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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
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    A law becomes an offence solely because of the fact that ... — Carmelics
    Home/Justice & Punishment
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    A law becomes an offence solely because of the fact that Parliament enacted it, not because of any evaluative judgment about whether enactment was a good idea.

    Justice & PunishmentPhilosophy of Language
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.The offence of driving without pneumatic tires did not exist before Parliament created it.
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    • 2.After Parliament acted, the offence existed as a consequence of that institutional act.
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    • 3.Whether Parliament's action was a good idea is irrelevant to the legal fact of the offence's existence.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Identifying what Parliament enacted requires interpretive judgment about legislative intent, purpose, and meaning—not mere observation of institutional fact.
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    • 2.Dworkin's 'law as integrity' shows that determining what the law *is* already embeds evaluative reasoning about what it ought to mean.
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    • 3.Therefore, the offence's content is partly constituted by evaluative judgment, not solely by the bare act of enactment.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Legal validity requires more than institutional enactment; it requires minimal conformity with moral principles (Fuller's inner morality of law).
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    • 2.A statute so unjust it cannot guide conduct fails as law, making parliamentary enactment insufficient to constitute a genuine legal offence.
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    Topics

    Justice & PunishmentPhilosophy of Language

    Connections

    1 topic

    Social Contract2 linked

    Related

    A statute so unjust it cannot guide conduct fails as law, making parliamentary e...After Parliament acted, the offence existed as a consequence of that institution...Dworkin's 'law as integrity' shows that determining what the law *is* already em...Identifying what Parliament enacted requires interpretive judgment about legisla...
    +4 moreShow less
    Legal validity requires more than institutional enactment; it requires minimal c...The offence of driving without pneumatic tires did not exist before Parliament c...Therefore, the offence's content is partly constituted by evaluative judgment, n...Whether Parliament's action was a good idea is irrelevant to the legal fact of t...

    Similar

    Whether Parliament's action was a good idea is irrelevant to the legal...83%After Parliament acted, the offence existed as a consequence of that i...78%If law is understood as a reason or purported reason for action, then ...76%Violation of a justified law is wrongful even when the underlying cond...75%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: law-language
    View source passageHide passage
    It is true that, in order to decide what the sources have directed (and thereby, in Raz’s terms, to identify the existence and content of a law), you need to understand the sense in which a word like ‘vehicle’ is used. But the existence and content of the offence can still be identified without first judging whether it ought to be an offence to do what Mr.Burr did, or whether there ought to be any offence at all of driving without pneumatic tires. The sources thesis articulates this important in
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit