Joseph Raz
Encyclopedia
Joseph Raz is a legal, moral and political
Political philosophy
Political philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...

 philosopher. He is one of the most prominent advocates of legal positivism
Legal positivism
Legal positivism is a school of thought of philosophy of law and jurisprudence, largely developed by nineteenth-century legal thinkers such as Jeremy Bentham and John Austin. However, the most prominent figure in the history of legal positivism is H.L.A...

. He has spent most of his career as professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 of philosophy of law and a fellow
Fellow
A fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. The term fellow is also used to describe a person, particularly by those in the upper social classes. It is most often used in an academic context: a fellow is often part of an elite group of learned people who are awarded...

 of Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....

, and simultaneously as professor of law at Columbia University Law School. Raz is currently a visiting professor at King's College London
King's College London
King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...

. Several of Raz's students have become important legal and moral philosophers.

Biography

Born in Mandate Palestine
Mandate Palestine
Mandate Palestine existed while the British Mandate for Palestine, which formally began in September 1923 and terminated in May 1948, was in effect...

 in 1939, Joseph Raz graduated in 1963 from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

 with a Magister Juris
Magister Juris
Magister Juris is an academic degree in law awarded by some universities.- The Magister Juris at the University of Oxford :...

 (Master of Jurisprudence), summa cum laude. Later, with funds provided by the Hebrew University, Raz pursued a Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

 (DPhil) at Oxford University under the supervision of H. L. A. Hart
H. L. A. Hart
Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart was an influential legal philosopher of the 20th century. He was Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford University and the Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford. He authored The Concept of Law....

. This was by no means coincidental; Raz had met Hart earlier at a conference in Israel. Hart says that at this meeting, Raz pointed out a flaw in his reasoning that had previously eluded him. Hart encouraged him to go to Oxford for further study.

Raz studied at Balliol College, Oxford and was awarded the DPhil in 1967. He then returned to Israel to teach at the Hebrew University as a Lecturer in the Faculty of Law and Department of Philosophy. In 1971, he was tenured and promoted to Senior Lecturer. In 1972, he returned to Balliol as a Fellow and Tutor in Law, becoming a Professor of Philosophy of Law, Oxford University, from 1985 to 2006, and then a Research Professor from 2006 to 2009. Since 2002 he has also been a Professor in the Law School at Columbia University, New York. He has held visiting appointments at several universities, and has also served on a number of editorial boards for the publication of journals and books.

Raz is acknowledged by his contemporaries as being one of the most important living legal philosophers. He has authored and edited nine books to date, namely The Concept of a Legal System (1970), Practical Reason and Norms (1975), The Authority of Law (1979), The Morality of Freedom (1986), Authority (1990), Ethics in the Public Domain (1994), Engaging Reason (1999), Value, Respect and Attachment (2001), and The Practice of Value (2003).

His first book, The Concept of a Legal System, was based on his doctoral thesis. A later book, The Morality of Freedom won two prizes: the 1987 W.J.M. Mackenzie Book Prize from the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom, awarded to the best book in political science each calendar year; and the 1988 Elaine and David Spitz Book Prize from the Conference for the Study of Political Thought, New York, awarded annually for the best book in liberal and/or democratic theory that had been published two years earlier.

The key ideas engaged in Raz's books are norms, authority, and the theory of legal positivism. His theory of norms refers roughly to rules that serve as a guide for human behaviour. It also includes the system(s) that those norms exist in, such as a legal system. The second aspect refers to questions on the authority that law has over people under a particular legal system, and the authority that society in general should acknowledge as due to the law. Such questions are important, for the law is in every corner of society, affecting the daily lives of individuals whether they like it or not. As Raz uses the term, 'legal positivism' refers to the view that there is no necessary conceptual relationship between law and morality; a law does not cease to be a law by being unjust or immoral. The term is sometimes used to describe the view that laws either cannot or even should not be grounded in morality; Raz does not defend that view.

His work has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada
Supreme Court of Canada
The Supreme Court of Canada is the highest court of Canada and is the final court of appeals in the Canadian justice system. The court grants permission to between 40 and 75 litigants each year to appeal decisions rendered by provincial, territorial and federal appellate courts, and its decisions...

 in such cases as Imperial Tobacco v. British Columbia
Imperial Tobacco v. British Columbia
British Columbia v. Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd., [2005] 2 S.C.R. 473, 2005 SCC 49, is a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada where the Court found that the provincial Tobacco Damages and Health Care Costs Recovery Act, which allowed the government to sue tobacco companies, was constitutionally...

, R. v. Demers, and Sauvé v. Canada (Chief Electoral Officer)
Sauvé v. Canada (Chief Electoral Officer)
Sauvé v. Canada , [2002] 3 S.C.R. 519 is a leading Supreme Court of Canada decision where the Court held that prisoners have a right to vote under section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Court overturned the prior decision of the Federal Court of Appeal and held that s...

.

In 1987 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. He has been awarded Honorary Doctorates by the Catholic University of Brussels
Catholic University of Brussels
The Katholieke Universiteit Brussel is a Flemish university located in Brussels, founded in 1969 as University Faculties St Aloysius , in many ways the equivalent of a liberal arts college. Teaching was primarily in Dutch. It became a university in the early 1990s...

, 1993, and by King's College London
King's College London
King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...

, 2009. In 2005 he received the International Prize for Legal Research 'Hector Fix-Zamudio' from the National Autonomous University of Mexico
National Autonomous University of Mexico
The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México is a university in Mexico. UNAM was founded on 22 September 1910 by Justo Sierra as a liberal alternative to the Roman Catholic-sponsored Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) (National Autonomous...

, and in 2009 a Vice-Presidency Award from the Law Society of University College Dublin
University College Dublin
University College Dublin ) - formally known as University College Dublin - National University of Ireland, Dublin is the Republic of Ireland's largest, and Ireland's second largest, university, with over 1,300 faculty and 17,000 students...

.

Work

A pupil of H. L. A. Hart
H. L. A. Hart
Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart was an influential legal philosopher of the 20th century. He was Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford University and the Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford. He authored The Concept of Law....

, Raz has been important in continuing Hart's arguments of legal positivism since Hart's death. This included editing a second edition of Hart's The Concept of Law, with an additional section including Hart's responses to other philosophers' criticisms of his work. His most recent work deals less with legal theory and more with political philosophy and practical reasoning. In political philosophy Raz is a proponent of a Perfectionist
Perfectionism (psychology)
Perfectionism, in psychology, is a belief that a state of completeness and flawlessness can and should be attained. In its pathological form, perfectionism is a belief that work or output that is anything less than perfect is unacceptable...

 Liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

. In moral theory Raz defends value pluralism and the idea that various values are incommensurable
Commensurability (ethics)
In ethics, two values are incommensurable when they do not share a common standard of measurement.Philosophers argue over the precise nature of value incommensurability, and discussions do not always exhibit a consistent terminology...

.

Publications

By Raz:
  • The Authority of Law (1979; 2nd ed., 2009)
  • The Concept of a Legal System (1970; 2nd ed., 1980)
  • The Morality of Freedom (1986)
  • Practical Reason and Norms (1975; 2nd ed., 1990)
  • Ethics in the Public Domain (1994; rev. pbk. ed., 1995)
  • Engaging Reason (1999)
  • Value, Respect and Attachment (2001)
  • The Practice of Value (2003)
  • Between Authority and Interpretation (2009)


On Raz's Work:
  • Lukas H. Meyer et al. (eds.), Rights, Culture and the Law: Themes from the Legal and Political Philosophy of Joseph Raz, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
  • R. Jay Wallace
    R. Jay Wallace
    R. Jay Wallace is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. His area of specialization is moral philosophy. He is most noted for his work on practical reason, moral psychology, and meta-ethics.-Biography:...

    et al. (eds.), Reason and Value: Themes from the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004.

External links

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