The term that describes the obligation or duty applied by a court may be a debt and a legal responsibility to fulfill what the law requires. What is the relationship between them? Some argue that obligation comes first: “[T]he obligation is not a sufficient condition for coercion, it is close to a necessary condition. A State may, in certain special circumstances, have good reason to force those who are not obliged to obey. But no general policy of maintaining steel law could be justified if the law were not generally a source of real obligations” (Dworkin 1986, 191). The idea is that simple justice on one`s side is an insufficient reason to force others; There must also be a special title that derives from the moral status of the law. (Contrast, for example, with Locke`s view that everyone has “executive power by natural law,” at least outside political society (§13).) 1. The term “contractual obligation” means the obligation to pay or perform certain actions arising from a contract or agreement. The idea that the benefits of the law must be accepted may not be a necessary condition for the validity of all fair play obligations (Arneson 1982; Klosko 1992), but it is essential for anyone trying to be consistent with political voluntarism. If a cooperation plan merely brings people benefits as an inevitable consequence of the cooperative activities of others – even very valuable benefits – any obligation to comply should be justified by one of the non-voluntary principles discussed above.
Of course, the addition of the acceptance condition does not diminish the fairness of consent: anyone who jumps over the subway turnstiles does not want to assume any obligation to pay for the ticket. But this makes equity vulnerable to the same objection: not enough people perform the corresponding action. The main benefits of an effective legal system, including security and order, are all sorts of non-exclusive public goods, which Simmons (1979, 138-39) calls “open benefits.” They can only be avoided at a high cost, and in many cases not at all. Moreover, not all cases of disobedience can plausibly be presented as parasitism, and the obligations of fairness follow the jurisprudence of the law only rudely and willfully. Fairness will lead to obligations if there is a beneficial practice of mutual coercion and accepted benefits – no matter if this is maintained by a law claiming jurisdiction over the subjects. In legal terminology, there are several forms of obligations, including: An absolute obligation is when a person or thing must do something or perform an action because the duty has unconditional conditions. For example, the government has an absolute obligation to implement all aspects of the Bill of Rights because all persons have these rights regardless of nationality, creed, colour or religion. An explicit commitment means that the duties, tasks or promises are expressly stated in the agreement or conditions. For example, Jacob`s new employment contract provides that he will stay with the company for two years and close at least 100 files per year.
But even in its limited role, the approval has provoked sharp criticism. (For a good overview, see Simmons 1979, 57-100; for a qualified defense, see Beran 1987.) These focus on the questions of whether it actually exists and, if given, whether it would bind. Consent is not mere consensus or consent; It is a performative commitment that assumes a commitment through the act of consent itself. However, as with other promises and oaths, there are limits to its validity. We must ensure that consent is not revoked by mistake, coercion or coercion. It must also respect the limits of its validity in terms of content. Locke argues that one cannot accept being killed, and therefore not slavery, and therefore nothing that amounts to slavery, including absolute government. One can think of an argument similar to the conclusion that political consent must be revocable. But as we build under all these conditions of validity, the commitment itself seems to do less and less work. Pitkin thinks he becomes “essentially irrelevant” in Locke`s version (Pitkin 1965, 57). Approval is saved from irrelevance only if we can explain why we value the power of committing to obedience. David Hume could not think of any reason: keeping one`s promises is an “artificial virtue” that serves the common good, just like obedience to the law.
As long as the law is reasonably legitimate – and Hume is prepared to give it a very large place – a promise to keep is superfluous, because any plausible answer to the question of why we are bound by the promise would have “immediately, without any cycle, taken into account our obligation of fidelity”; “Since we are of equal power and authority, we gain nothing by dissolving one into the other” (Hume 1985, 481). However, a theory of consent does not have to “dissolve” fidelity into a promise – there may also be non-culpable conditions for obedience – but it must explain why it should depend on it. Three types of arguments were popular. First, there are good reasons for wanting a conscious control of responsibility for legal obligations. In political authority, where the stakes are as high as they come, the power to give and refuse consent fulfills a function of ultimate protection beyond what we might expect from the fallible institutions of limited government. Second, consent allows people to build political loyalties by creating new political societies or joining existing ones, without waiting for the gradual emergence of community ties and reciprocity; Consent is an immediate passport to “perfect membership” in a Commonwealth. (Locke: § 119). Third, although consent is defined by its performative character, it is naturally accompanied by complementary non-performative characteristics: consent also expresses acceptance, or at least approval, of the government. This may mark approval leaders as important among a number of potential competitors, and it may indicate that they have a good chance of being effective, which in itself is a necessary condition for justifying any political authority. Whatever else they do, all legal systems recognize, create, modify and enforce obligations. This is no coincidence: obligations are at the heart of the social role of law, and their explanation is necessary to understand the authority of law and, therefore, its essence.
There are not only obligations in the law, there are also obligations under the law. Historically, most philosophers have agreed that these include a moral obligation of obedience, or what is generally referred to as a “political obligation.” Proactive activists argued that this required something like voluntary submission to the rules of the law, for example by consent. Non-voluntarists have denied this, insisting that the value of a fair and effective legal system is sufficient to validate the law`s claims. Both arguments have recently come under scrutiny, and some philosophers now deny that the law is entitled to all the authority it claims for itself, even if the legal system is legitimate and reasonably just. From this point of view, there are legal obligations to which some legal entities have no moral obligation. Example TLD: Helping the victim of a car accident on a busy highway may be morally correct, but the law generally imposes no legal obligation on the average person to do so.