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Leslie Green
Professor of the Philosophy of Law +
Leslie Green
(BA, Queen's, Canada; MA; MPhil; DPhil, Oxon.) was appointed to the Professorship of the Philosophy of Law and to a Professorial Fellowship at Balliol in 2007. After beginning his teaching career as Darby Fellow and Tutor at Lincoln College, Professor Green moved to Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto. He has been a Visiting Professor of Law at Berkeley; a Visiting Fellow at Columbia University's Center for Law and Philosophy; a Regular Visiting Professor at the University of Texas; and a Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago Law School. He is also a member of the Hauser Global Faculty at New York University School of Law. Professor Green writes and teaches in the areas of jurisprudence, moral and political philosophy and constitutional theory. He is co-editor of Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Law.
Subject groups : Philosophy of Law : Human Rights Law
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L Green, 'Law as a Means' (2009) Oxford Legal Research Paper Series (e-pub)
Abstract: This article defends legal instrumentalism, i.e. the thesis that law is distinguished among social institutions more by the means by which it serves its ends, than by the ends it serves. In Kelsen's terms, '[L]aw is a means, a specific social means, not an end.' The defence is indirect. First, it is argued that the instrumentalist thesis is an interpretation of a broader view about law that is common ground among theorists as different as Aquinas and Bentham. Second, the following familiar fallacies that seem to stand in the way of accepting the thesis are refuted: (1) If law is an instrument, then law can have no non-instrumental value. (2) If law is an instrument, then law always has instrumental value. (3) For law to be an instrument, there must be generic end that law serves. (4) If law is an instrument, law must be a neutral instrument. These claims are all wrong. In passing, the instrumentalist thesis is distinguished from other, unrelated, views sometimes associated with instrumentalism, including Brian Tamanaha's diagnosis of the vices of American law, and the views of those who think that jurisprudence is an instrument in the service of social ends.
L Green, 'Two Worries About Respect' (2009) Oxford Legal Studies Research Paper No. 4/2009. (e-pub)
Abstract: This is the penultimate version of a paper originally presented at the conference, 'Value, Respect and Well-Being: Themes from the work of Joseph Raz,' held at the Manchester Centre for Political Theory in May 2008. The paper explores two problems about the familiar ideal of respect for persons. First, how can we explain respect as a distinct moral and political duty? Second, how can we contain unreasonable demands that we respect other's views or allegiances as necessary aspects of respecting them as persons? The problem is approached by testing some of the leading arguments in Joseph Raz's Seeley Lectures.
L Green, 'Law and the Causes of Judicial Decisions' (2009) 14/2009 Oxford Legal Research Paper Series 1-36 (e-pub)
Abstract: This paper tests Brian Leiter's claim that the American legal realists were proto-naturalists in legal philosophy and were thus immune to objections based on claims that they offered defective analyses of legal concepts. It disputes Leiter's account of the core claim of realist thought, and reaffirms the view that some of them were indeed engaged in, or presupposed, conceptual work of a kind familiar to analytic jurisprudence. It explains how those who did not intend to offer conceptual analyses nonetheless made conceptual errors. It offers a fresh account of the basis of the realists scepticism, here deploying the idea of 'permissive sources' of law. The paper concludes with reflections on the preconditions and prospects for 'naturalizing' jurisprudence, suggesting that Hans Kelsen was correct to think that such efforts will either fail, or will simply change the subject.
L Green, 'Positivism and the Inseparability of Law and Morals' (2008) 83 New York University Law Review 1035-1058
Abstract: This article seeks to clarify and assess HLA Hart's famous claim that legal positivism somehow involves a “separation of law and morals.” The paper contends that Hart's “separability thesis” should not be confused with the “social thesis,” with the “sources thesis,” or with a methodological thesis about jurisprudence. In contrast to all of these, Hart's separability thesis denies the existence of any necessary (conceptual) connections between law and morality. But that thesis is false: there are many necessary connections between law and morality, some of them conceptually significant. Among them is an important negative connection: law is of its nature morally fallible and morally risky. Lon Fuller emphasized what he called the “internal morality of law,” the “morality that makes law possible”. Hart’s most important message is that there is also an immorality that law makes possible. Law's nature is seen not only in its internal virtues, in legality, but also in its internal vices, in legalism.
ISBN: 0028-7881
L Green, 'On Being Tolerated' in M Kramer, C Grant, B Colborn, A Hatzistavrou (eds), The Legacy of HLA Hart: Legal, Political, and Moral Philosophy (Oxford University Press 2008)
Abstract: Why is it that toleration can be uncomfortable for the tolerated? And how should tolerators respond to that discomfort? This paper argues that properly directed toleration can be deficient in its scope, grounds or spirit. That explains some of the discomfort in being tolerated. Beyond this, the occasions for toleration¿the existence of a power to prevent and of an adverse judgment¿can also make toleration sting. The paper then explores and rejects two familiar suggestions about how one should respond to this discomfort: with acceptance or recognition of the tolerated. It is proposed instead that toleration should be supplemented by understanding. The nature and importance of this attitude are assessed.
ISBN: 978-0-19-954289-5
L Green, 'The Duty to Govern' (2007) 13 Legal Theory 165-185
L Green, 'Men in the Place of Women, from Butler to Little Sisters' (2006) 44 Osgoode Hall Law Journal 1-25
L Green, 'General Jurisprudence: a 25th Anniversary Essay' (2005) 25(4) Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 565-580
DOI: 10.1093/ojls/gqi030
ISBN: 1464-3820
L Green, 'Law and Obligations' in J. Coleman and S. Shapiro (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law (OUP 2002)
L Green, 'Pluralism, Social Conflict, and Tolerance' in A Soeteman (ed), Pluralism and Law (Springer 2001)
L Green, 'Pornographies' (2000) 8 Journal of Political Philosophy 27-52
L Green, The Authority of the State (Clarendon Press 1990)
Correspondence address: Balliol College, Oxford OX1 3BJ
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