Abstract

The thesis defends a version of natural law. My strategy is to start with Fuller's thesis of the action-guidingness of law, and, through connections with central insights in Hart and Dworkin, establish law-morality connections with significance. ;Chapter I critically analyses the idea of action-guidingness, and Chapter II shows how the level of action-guidingness necessary to the existence of law helps limit injustice. Now the illumination of complex systems requires an appeal to a higher level of action-guidingness. The Hartian notion of acceptance enters the picture here. ;Chapter III argues that the level of acceptance adequate to capture complex systems provides for limitations of injustice stronger than those established in Chapter II. And in Chapter IV, I argue, in part through an interpretation of Dworkin's thesis of adjudication in terms of official acceptance, that officials help maintain the sense in which law promotes justice. ;The main strength of the thesis, I note in the conclusion, is that it is able to capture the legality of controversial cases like South Africa while saying something significant about the place of morality. I also briefly outline how the law-morality connections may serve as the basis of a powerful, new interpretation of legal obligations as moral compulsions