ABSTRACT
The related, but distinct, questions concerning the justification of state authority and the moral obligation to obey the law are crucial and enduring questions of political philosophy and legal theory. The question of the moral obligation to obey the law has occupied virtually every leading legal philosopher from John Finnis and Professor Raz to Dworkin and Greenawalt. The questions in the chapter consider how state authority is to be justified, if at all, and whether there is any general moral obligation to obey the law. In The Authority of the State Leslie Green comments that all modern states claim authority over their citizens and that the state's authority claims to be supreme. Indeed, as a form of social order, the state is distinctive in claiming supreme and wide authority over the lives of citizens. The greatest challenge to the attempt to justify political authority has come from the tradition of political thought known as 'philosophical anarchism'.
