View article

Joseph Raz argues that if certain conduct is demanded of me by those with legal authority, then, as a consequence of that demand, I have a second-ordér, preemptive reason to disregard all first-order reasons that bear on the justifiability of that conduct except for the first-order reason that the conduct is legally demanded. What he means is that before the legal authorities act, I have only ordinary (first-order) reasons for and against the conduct in question. After they act, I have an addi-tional first-order reason for the conduct, namely, that they demand it. But as an additional consequence of their demand, I now have a reason to exclude from the balance of first-order reasons all reasons that were the basis of the authorities' demand. That new reason is a secondorder reason, a reason superior to first-order reasons. In other words, Raz analyzes legal authority in terms of the capacity to create what he calls" exclusionary …