Kara Woodbury-Smith: "Inclusive Legal Positivism and Entailed Law"

Abstract: 

In Ethics in the Public Domain, Joseph Raz writes that the ‘incorporation
thesis’ (now known as Inclusive Legal Positivism, henceforth: ILP), can be roughly
summed up as making the following claim about law:

           ‘All law is either source-based or entailed by source-based law.’ 

Raz goes on to explain that the content of an authoritative directive cannot sensibly
be said to extend to ‘all that is entailed’ by that directive and, therefore, ILP is
incompatible with the authoritative nature of law.

My aims are: [1] to understand what the entailed law thesis is and how it operates within the context of Raz’s defence of the ‘Sources Thesis’ (what is now known as Exclusive Legal
Positivism, henceforth: ELP). [2] to try to understand why he thinks ILP necessarily
includes the entailed law thesis. And finally, [3] to begin to unpick whether he is
mistaken. The hypothesis I’m working with is: it may be possible for some version of
ILP to include the entailed law thesis, but ILP does not necessarily include it.