Joseph Raz
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- "Raz" redirects here. For the Russian mystic, see Grigori Rasputin. For the Psychonauts character, see Razputin.
Joseph Raz (born 1939) is a legal, moral and political philosopher. He is soon to step down from a personal chair (having reached the UK mandatory retirement age) as Professor of philosophy of law and a fellow of Balliol College. Raz is also a Professor at Columbia Law School. Raz is one of the most influential living legal philosophers and an advocate of legal positivism. Several of Raz's students have become important legal and moral philosophers. They include Julie Dickson (Oxford), Dori Kimel (Oxford), Timothy Endicott (Oxford), John Gardner, the current Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford (and successor to Dworkin), Leslie Green (York & Texas, and soon to take up the Professorship in the Philosophy of Law at Oxford), Timothy Macklem (London), Robert P. George (Princeton) and Scott Shapiro (Michigan).
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[edit] Biography
Born in Israel, he studied law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and graduated with a Magister Juris in 1963. He met Hart at a conference in Israel. Hart says that at this meeting, Raz pointed out a flaw in his reasoning that had previously eluded him. Hart encouraged him to go to Oxford for further study.
Raz studied at Balliol College, Oxford and was awarded the DPhil in 1967 by the shortest route possible, skipping the usual sequence of BCL, MPhil and then the DPhil.
He was appointed Fellow at Balliol. Raz's presence has now made it a magnet for legal scholars.
[edit] Work
A pupil of H. L. A. Hart, Raz has been important in continuing Hart's arguments of legal positivism since Hart's death. This included editing a second edition of Hart's 'The Concept of Law', with an additional section including Hart's responses to other philosophers' criticisms of his work. Raz's most recent work has dealt less with legal theory proper and more with political philosophy and practical reasoning. In political philosophy Raz is a proponent of a Perfectionist Liberalism. In moral theory Raz defends value pluralism and the idea that various values are incommensurable.
For the last several years Raz has devoted comparatively little time to questions in Jurisprudence proper, spending more time on practical reasoning, ethics, and political philosophy.
[edit] Publications
By Raz:
- The Authority of Law (1979)
- The Concept of a Legal System (2nd ed., 1980)
- The Morality of Freedom (1986)
- Practical Reason and Norms (2nd ed., 1990)
- Ethics in the Public Domain (revised paperback edition, 1995)
- Engaging Reason (1999)
- Value, Respect and Attachment (2001)
- The Practice of Value (2003)
The Morality of Freedom won the W.J.M. Mackenzie Book Prize from the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom and The Elaine and David Spitz Book Prize from the conference for the Study of Political Thought, NY.
On Raz:
- Lukas H. Meyer et. al. (eds.), Rights, Culture and the Law: Themes from the Legal and Political Philosophy of Joseph Raz, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003.
- R. Jay Wallace et. al. (eds.), Reason and Value: Themes from the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz, Clarendon, Oxford, 2004.
