The Structure of Social Practices and the Connection between Law and Morality

One of the best-known contributions that Jules Coleman has made to legal theory lies in his idea that the rule of recognition, if conceived of as a shared cooperative activity, should be the gateway through which to incorporate moral constraints on the content of law. This analysis, however, leaves unanswered two important questions. For one thing, we do not know when or even why morality becomes a criterion of legality. And, for another thing, we still do not know what conception of morality it is that we are dealing with. In this article, we will attempt to clarify in greater depth what relations there might be between the social practice of law and its morality. We will thus see how the cooperative nature of social practices imbues law with a moral force, and how this makes it possible to establish a “weak” connection between law and morality. But to see this, we will need to single out some basic features of cooperative social practices, thus setting out a suitable framework for the view just mentioned.