Human Agency in Law and Jurisprudence

Abstract

<p>This dissertation explores the way in which different conceptions of human agency have helped to shape the course of jurisprudential thought. The overarching aim is to bring to the surface the deeper commitments of Hartian positivism in its various engagements with rival accounts of the nature of law. In particular, I argue that although contemporary positivists take their account of law to be metaphysically noncommittal, views of what it is to be a human agent continue to motivate, if implicitly, their positions on such enduring jurisprudential questions as the nature and source of law’s normativity, the relationship between law and morality, and so on. In order to better understand these debates, we must therefore understand better the relationship between a theory of law and the conception of human nature that drives it.</p>