Abstract

In this paper, I seek to establish which sort of entity a legal obligation is. I will first consider that in the literature several referents have been associated to legal obligation. Some of them are linguistic in nature, whilst others have a factual quality or an ideal quality. After criticising the reductions of legal obligation to a linguistic object and to a state of affair, qua fact of some kind, I pass to explore the claim that legal obligation is best conceptualised as an intersubjective reason for action. In this context, I will also claim that, from the perspective on legal ontology, reasons for action (and thus the obligations the law engenders) are ideal objects, or mental constructs, of a distinct quality. For, qua objects of thought, legal obligations are not merely psychological entities existing in the minds of the individuals imposing them or in the minds of the individuals subject to them. By contrast, they are abstract constructs that possess a somehow objective (or at least interpersonal, qua non-purely-psychological) reality. The final part of the essay will be devoted to discuss the implications that this ontological characterisation of legal obligation has for our understanding of law.