The Basis Of Law Enforcement

The foundation of the obedience to law has evoked theoretical disputes about the general conditions of the law’s legitimacy. Fundamentally, the content of obeying the law is subject to the foundation for obeying the law. The problem of the obedience or disobedience to law always involves studying the basic reasons why people obey the law. Actually, there is a common point between the question "Why do people obey the law?" and the question "Should bad laws ask for obedience?":their answers can be divided into two types. One type is looking for the ground of the obedience outside the law, the other type is looking for reasons of the obedience inside the law. The former means to recognize that there is another standard above the laws, that the laws must conform to that standard to obtain their legitimacy, that wherever the laws do not accord with that standard, people could refuse to obey them, that accordingly the content of obedience is not confined to the entire legal provisions. The latter means that the reasons why people obey the law are the provisions of the law, so there is no ground for disobedience.In Raz’s opinion, it is in the authority of law that lies the basis for people to obey the law, that is, the foundation of obedience to the law is immanent in the law itself, in the authoritative nature of law. Authoritative reason is persuasive enough to get the exclusive priority in weighing the reasons of actions and make the agents’ actions constrained and no longer arbitrary. Raz denies a general obligation to obey the laws, and what he actually means is that there is no general morality for people to obey the law. Our obedience to the law may be based on reasons of morality, or reasons of prudence, however, these don’t constitute the foundation of the obedience to law, since they are not universally applied to any one in any situation. Raz’s denial of the general obligation of obedience to the law is consistent with his firm position of exclusive positivism, that there is the claim for the obedience to law, but there is no general obligation of the obedience to law.