Past Event: MPWG: Armando Perez-Gea (Yale)

Title: Towards a Revised Planning Theory of Law: Essential Properties Different from Characteristic and Unique Properties

Abstract: The central claim of this essay is that the philosophy of law literature has missed the distinction between essential properties (properties that make something a law), unique properties (properties only laws have), and characteristic properties (properties law should have as laws). My position is that of the current dominant theories of law, the Planning Theory of Law presents the best definition of the law. Yet, even if this is the best current theory, like the other theories of law, it conflates essential properties with characteristic and unique properties. This conflation actually obscures a very important point about the Planning Theory’s circumstances of legality: that the circumstances of legality arise only and exclusively from a community.