Moral conflict and legal reasoning : contradictions between liberalism and liberal legalism

• Main Author: Veitch, T. Scott
• Published: University of Edinburgh 1997
• Subjects: 340
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.663202

The thesis explores the significance of moral conflict for an understanding of the role of law and legal reasoning in contemporary society. In doing so it suggests that there are contradictions between liberalism, in a version drawn from the work of Isaiah Berlin, and liberal legalism. The thesis looks at recent critiques of liberal theory, and centrally on that provided by Alasdair MacIntyre, to help understand the significance of moral conflict in contemporary society. It then explores how a liberal understanding of moral conflict ought to view current structures of law and legal reasoning. It is here that key contradictions emerge. In focusing on both the internal justificatory practices of liberal legalism, and on those practices understood from an external point of view, the thesis draws out incompatibilities between such practices and the liberal theory here expressed. It concludes that the vested institutional power of the legal system ought to be challenged if the concerns and aspirations of such a theory are to be taken seriously.