Law, Practical Reason, and Future Generations

Abstract

Complex moral and political problems like climate change have the capacity to make wrongful (in)actions appear reasonable. This has significance for the central questions of jurisprudence. If we cannot plan rationally for the future, or acts now thought to be rational and blameless become progressively more blameworthy, central elements in our understanding of law – planning, reasonableness, and authority – may diminish in their ability to explain the function and normativity of law. If this is the case, legal positivism and legal non-positivism appear to be confronted with significant, but different, challenges depending on the extent that they conceive of law as future-orientated planning or as a form of practical reasonableness.