Law is a Moral Practice (Harvard University Press, 2023)

In this book, I offer a fresh take on many of the central questions in jurisprudence: What is law? How is it related to morality? When are people obligated to obey the law? What is the rule of law and why is it important? I start from a simple premise—that law is a moral practice—a practice through which we adjust our moral relationships. And I argue that we should understand the claims made in court as moral claims—claims about the parties’ genuine rights and responsibilities. In so arguing, I reject the dominant view in jurisprudence—that law and morality are separate normative systems. And as a consequence, I also reject the dominant way of framing many jurisprudential debates. The debate between positivists and natural lawyers, for instance, assumes that morality and law are separate normative systems, asking whether the former contributes to the content of the latter. And the debate over whether we are obligated to obey the law presumes that we can ascertain the content of the law independent of its moral force. In the book, I work through the consequences of seeing law as moral practice, exploring the nature of the rule of law, the moral significance of immoral laws, the right way to read statutes, and the relationship between lawyers and morality.

Selected Papers

Treating Wrongs as Wrongs: An Expressive Argument for Tort Law, 10 J. Tort L. 1 (2017). 

The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Tort Law, 130 Harv. L. Rev.  942 (2017) (review of Arthur Ripstein’s Private Wrongs).

The End of Jurisprudence, 124 Yale L.J. 1160 (2015).

The Model of Plans and The Prospects for Positivism, 125 Ethics 152 (2014).

Tort as a Substitute for Revenge in Philosophical Foundations of the Law of Torts (John Oberdiek, ed., 2014).

What Does Tort Law Do? What Can It Do?  47 Val. U. L. Rev. 99 (2012) (Monsanto Lecture)

The Authority of Law, in Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Law (Andrei Marmor, ed., 2012). 

Corrective Justice for Civil Recourse Theorists, 39 Fla. St. L. Rev. 107 (2011).

Harry Potter and the Trouble with Tort Theory, 63 Stan. L. Rev. 67 (2011).

The Role of Authority, 11 Philosophers’ Imprint 7 (2011).

Two Models of Tort (and Takings), 92 Va. L. Rev. 1147 (2006).

Integrity and Stare Decisis, in Exploring Law’s Empire (2006).

Legitimacy, Democracy, and Razian Authority, 9 Legal Theory 201 (2003).

Wittgenstein on Rules: The Phantom Menace, 22 Oxford J. Legal Stud. 619 (2002).