Republican Authority

Published in modified form in M.N.S. Sellers, REPUBLICAN LEGAL THEORY, Chapter VI, Macmillan, 2003

25 Pages Posted: 11 Jun 2008 Last revised: 4 Sep 2008

Date Written: 2003

Abstract

The proper jurisdiction of lawful authority has always been a central issue in Anglo-American jurisprudence. English and American legal institutions both grew out of a seventeenth- century British culture that valued liberty, and sought to defend it through law, by carefully defining the scope and proper purpose of lawful authority. Yet after 1776 the two nations diverged. English lawyers began to reconceptualize the authority of law in language developed to counter seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European revolutionary thought. British reactions to the English, American and French republics introduced Hobbesian conceptions of legal authority into legal discourse, which still influence common-law jurisprudence today, and mislead English-speaking lawyers who have adopted British terminology. Achieving justice through law will require a more precise vocabulary. Republican legal theory offers valuable corrections to the positivist misconceptions of Thomas Hobbes' latter-day (and often unwitting) disciples.

Keywords: republicanism, legal theory, theory of law, legal history

JEL Classification: K1, K4

Suggested Citation

Sellers, Mortimer Newlin Stead, Republican Authority (2003). Published in modified form in M.N.S. Sellers, REPUBLICAN LEGAL THEORY, Chapter VI, Macmillan, 2003, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1143503

Mortimer Newlin Stead Sellers (Contact Author)

University of Baltimore - School of Law ( email )

1420 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21218
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
95
Abstract Views
654
Rank
495,746
PlumX Metrics