On moral impact and legal practice

Abstract

Some recent debates in general jurisprudence concern so-called 'moral impact ' theories of law, chiefly in the version proposed by Mark Greenberg. Greenberg provocatively portrays law as the moral impact of institutional action. He presents his 'moral impact' formula as the 'legally correct' way to figure out the law's content on the part of practitioners. His proposal has attracted some fine scholarship denouncing ambiguities within the account, and inconsistencies between the account and legal practice. Bill Watson takes these concerns a valuable step further. He argues that Greenberg's theory distorts not only what practitioners count as law, but also how they reason to that effect.