ABSTRACT
Two essential features of law are (1) the ‘sources’ thesis – that the identification of law does not depend upon a moral argument and (2) the law’s claim to legitimate moral authority. This second essential and inescapable feature of law is part of the explanation of one of the key concerns in jurisprudence – the ‘normativity of law’. Of course Professor Dworkin has denied that legal theory is essentially about the ‘essential’ properties of law but rather Dworkin conceives that the proper function of legal theory is to justify the use of state coercion through law: see Dworkin, Justice in Robes (2006) p 13. For Dworkin the ‘nature of law’ is not as central to legal theory as he conceives it to be.
