Legal Validity

Maris Köpcke is a Research Fellow at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, and a Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Barcelona.

• 1. Introduction: Why Legal Validity? I. An Intriguing Fact II. The Code Idea III. A Neglected Question 2. Legal Power I. The Task Ahead II. Facilities to Change Legal Positions III. Super-Tramp IV. Raz’s Take V. Facilities Revisited, or Robert’s Home Move 3. Intention in Valid Acts I. Four Peculiar Traits II. The Technique of Communication III. Codes, or How to Speak Your Mind IV. Back to LawV. Valid Acts That Invoke a Legal Regime VI. Valid Acts That Circulate VII. Unintentional Valid Acts VIII. Failed Attempts IX. The Technique of Legal Validity 4. Justice and Convergence I. Duties of Justice II. Specific Convergence III. The Scope of Specific Convergence IV. Marking and Enforcing V. Law’s Marking: Legal Validity VI. Two Levels of Convergence 5. Reasons to Empower I. Empowerment II. Expertise and Capacity III. Proximity IV. The Rule of Law: Rulings V. The Rule of Law: Rulings About ValidityVI. The Rule of Law: General Law-Making VII. Self-Direction 6. The Systemic Character of Legal Meaning I. The Moral Need for Law’s Positivity A. Determinacy B. Ease of Identification C. Targeted Crafting II. The Systemic Character of Legal Meaning III. A Function of the Acts of Others IV. Legal Meaning Through Time V. A Single Author? VI. Threads in a Fabric 7. Conclusion: The Fabric of Justice I. The Strength of Limited Power II. Validity’s Spell

There are a couple of wonderful things about this book. One is certainly the clearness of language and the general accessibility of her work. Another is her explicit focus on the technical aspect of the law, i.e., on the law as a specific social technique. This presents a welcome shift from a rather unfruitful focus on the law’s essence to its functioning (note, not its function!), i.e., from what the law is to how exactly the law does what it does.