Joseph Raz

Joseph Raz FBA
Raz in 2009
Born	(1939-03-21)21 March 1939 Mandatory Palestine
Died	2 May 2022 (aged 83) Charing Cross Hospital, London, England
Alma mater	Hebrew University of Jerusalem Balliol College, Oxford
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Legal positivism Perfectionist liberalism
Main interests	Legal and political philosophy
Notable ideas	Perfectionist liberalism

Joseph Raz FBA (/rɑːz/; Hebrew: יוסף רז; 21 March 1939 – 2 May 2022) was an Israeli legal, moral and political philosopher. He was one of the most prominent advocates of legal positivism and is well known for his conception of perfectionist liberalism. Raz spent most of his career as a professor of philosophy of law at the University of Oxford associated with Balliol College, and was latterly a part-time professor of law at Columbia University Law School and a part-time professor at King's College London. He received the Tang Prize in Rule of Law in 2018.

Life and career

Born in Mandatory Palestine in 1939, Joseph Raz graduated in 1963 from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a Magister Juris (summa cum laude). Later, with funds provided by the Hebrew University, Raz pursued a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford under the supervision of H. L. A. Hart. Raz had met Hart earlier at a conference in Israel, impressing him by pointing out a flaw in his reasoning that had previously eluded him; Hart encouraged him to go to Oxford for further study. Raz studied at Balliol College and completed his DPhil in 1967.

He then returned to Israel to teach at the Hebrew University as a lecturer in the Faculty of Law and Department of Philosophy. In 1971, he was tenured and promoted to Senior Lecturer. In 1972, he returned to Balliol as a Fellow and Tutor in Law, becoming a Professor of Philosophy of Law, Oxford University, from 1985 to 2006, and then a Research Professor from 2006 to 2009. In 2002 he also became a professor at Columbia Law School in New York and starting in 2011 was a research professor of law at King's College London.

Raz died on 2 May 2022 at Charing Cross Hospital in his sleep. The Oxford Law Faculty called him "one of the last remaining giants of jurisprudence and philosophy".

Philosophical work

A pupil of H. L. A. Hart, Raz was important in continuing the development of legal positivism both before and since Hart's death. Raz was also co-editor of a second edition of Hart's The Concept of Law with a postscript including Hart's responses to other philosophers' criticisms of his work.

Raz's first book, The Concept of a Legal System, was based on his doctoral thesis. A later book, The Morality of Freedom won two prizes: the 1987 W.J.M. Mackenzie Book Prize from the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom, awarded to the best book in political science each calendar year; and the 1988 Elaine and David Spitz Book Prize from the Conference for the Study of Political Thought, New York, awarded annually for the best book in liberal and/or democratic theory that had been published two years earlier. The book develops a conception of perfectionist liberalism.

Raz argued for a distinctive understanding of legal commands as exclusionary reasons for action and for the "service conception" of authority, according to which those subject to an authority "can benefit by its decisions only if they can establish their existence and content in ways which do not depend on raising the very same issues which the authority is there to settle." This, in turn, supports Raz's argument for legal positivism, in particular "the sources thesis", "the idea that an adequate test for the existence and content of law must be based only on social facts, and not on moral arguments."

Raz was acknowledged by his contemporaries as being one of the most important legal philosophers of his generation. He authored and edited twelve books, namely The Concept of a Legal System (1970), Practical Reason and Norms (1975), The Authority of Law (1979), The Morality of Freedom (1986), Authority (1990), Ethics in the Public Domain (1994), Engaging Reason (1999), Value, Respect and Attachment (2001), The Practice of Value (2003), Between Authority and Interpretation (2009), From Normativity to Responsibility (2011) and The Roots of Normativity (2022). His most recent work deals less with legal theory and more with political philosophy and practical reasoning. In moral theory, Raz defended value pluralism and the idea that various values are incommensurable.

Raz's work has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada in such cases as Imperial Tobacco v. British Columbia and Sauvé v. Canada (Chief Electoral Officer).

Several of Raz's students became important legal and moral philosophers, including two current Professors in Jurisprudence at Oxford, Leslie Green and Timothy Endicott, and the former professor of Jurisprudence John Gardner.

Honors and awards

Raz was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1987 and of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1992. He was awarded Honorary Doctorates by the Catholic University of Brussels, 1993, by King's College London, 2009, and by Hebrew University, 2014. In 2005 he received the International Prize for Legal Research 'Hector Fix-Zamudio' from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and in 2009 a Vice-Presidency Award from the Law Society of University College Dublin. In 2018 he received the prestigious Tang Prize in Rule of Law from Taiwan.

In 2000–2001, he gave the Tanner Lectures on Human Values on "The Practice of Value" at the University of California Berkeley.

Books

• The Concept of a Legal System: An Introduction to the Theory of Legal System (2 ed.). Oxford University Press. 1980 [1970]. ISBN 0198251890.
• Practical reason and norms (2 ed.). Princeton University Press. 1990 [1975]. ISBN 0691078513.
• The Authority of Law: Essays on Law and Morality (2 ed.). Oxford University Press. 2009 [1979]. ISBN 9780199573561.
• The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1986. ISBN 0198247729.
• Ethics in the Public Domain: Essays in the Morality of Law and Politics (Rev. ed.). Clarendon Press. 1996 [1994]. ISBN 0198260695.
• Engaging Reason: On the Theory of Value and Action. Oxford University Press. 1999. ISBN 9780199248001.
• Value, Respect and Attachment. Cambridge University Press. 2001. ISBN 052180180X.
• The Practice of Value. Oxford University Press. 2003. ISBN 0199261474.
• Between Authority and Interpretation: On the Theory of Law and Practical Reason. Oxford University Press. 2009. ISBN 9780199562688.
• From Normativity to Responsibility. Oxford University Press. 2011. ISBN 9780199693818.
• The Roots of Normativity. Oxford University Press. 2022. ISBN 9780192847003.

See also

• Philosophy of law

References

• "Symposium: The Works of Joseph Raz". Southern California Law Review. 62 (3): 731–1235. 1988–1989. Including a response by Raz.
• Lukas H. Meyer et al. (eds.), Rights, Culture and the Law: Themes from the Legal and Political Philosophy of Joseph Raz, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
• R. Jay Wallace et al. (eds.), Reason and Value: Themes from the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004.

External links

• Page at Oxford University
• Page at Columbia University
• Page at King's College London
• Personal page
• A summary of Raz on the right to euthanasia
• A summary of Raz on number problems in morality
• A blog summary of Raz's argument for the sources thesis, part one
• A blog summary of Raz's argument for the sources thesis, part two