Law as an Artifact: An Assessment

Abstract

Artifact theories of law are aimed at explaining the nature of law, that is, answering the ontological question of legal philosophy in terms of the ontology of artifacts in general. In recent years, some legal theorists (particularly Luka Burazin, Jonathan Crowe, Kenneth Ehrenberg, and Corrado Roversi) have been putting forward artifact theories of law to deal with several classic legal-philosophical problems, such as the role of functional explanation in the legal domain, legal normativity, the relation between law and morality, the relation between authoritative production and recognition, and the role of officials in the construction of legal systems. In this article, I will try to highlight and weigh the theory’s pros and cons.