Biography

Alon Harel is the Mizock professor of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He wrote numerous articles in moral, political and legal philosophy. He also published articles on law and economics, criminal law and constitutional theory. His recent book Why Law Matters (Oxford University Press, 2014) argues that legal institutions and procedures are not only means to secure independently specifiable ends. They are constituent aspects of a just society and the contribution they make to it is not contingent but necessary.

Abstract 

This article addresses a basic question of general jurisprudence, namely, what difference law makes in moral space.  It argues that the difference at issue does not necessarily come to telling us what morality (or justice) might dictate but rather to establishing a way of attributing decisions to all of us and not to any one of us in particular.  This also means that law’s distinctive moral virtue is not justice but legitimacy.  What renders this possible is the emergence of public officials whose value lies in being public officials.  In that, the article defends the standing conception of law, according to which law’s most basic moral contribution is that of establishing an entity whose normative pronouncements could count as made in the name of (or even by) the polity.