Political and legal views of Joseph Raz: Main provisions and problematic aspects

The aim of the article is a comprehensive study of the political and legal views of Joseph Raz, one of the leading Anglo-American legal scholars of the 20th century. The relevance of the research objectives of the work is due to a significant gap in studies on the scientific work of Raz in the domestic literature and their non-systemic nature. The methodological basis of the article was a set of general scientific and special methods, including techniques of formal logic, systemic, comparative, and biographical methods. Thanks to the use of these methods, it was possible to analyze scientific publications and the biography of the lawyer and establish that the basis of his views was the key principles of analytical jurisprudence and the research program of his immediate teacher, Herbert Hart. An additional problem area of Raz's scientific work, which also directly influenced his legal views, is moral and political philosophy. In general, the range of topics of the author's concept of Raz includes the following issues: concepts of law and the essence of rules in the legal system, the process of fixing rules in legislation and judicial practice, the relationship and influence of morality on law. It is their consistent study, as well as the need to formulate general concluding critical remarks, that determined the structure of the work. Based on the above-mentioned premises, the legal scholar forms the author's understanding of law as a system of protected exclusive grounds for the actions of individuals established by an authoritative power. Law can only be defined by reference to social facts and has strictly formal-legal characteristics, which Raz describes through the "Sources Thesis", which is fundamental to his theory. Law can be normative only if it meets two requirements - the conditions of agent and identification, that is, it comes from an authority and has an external, easily determinable form. Any additional arguments and value arguments regarding the proper content of legal norms do not meet the above-mentioned conditions and do not affect legal reality, since they complicate the perception of law by individuals. As a result, the article concludes that Raz constructs a legal theory that is "exclusive" of morality and value argumentation, thereby standing at the forefront of Anglo-American legal positivism in the dispute between representatives of a softer direction within positivism and anti-positivists. Despite the significant value of Raz's scientific views, the work also highlights a whole list of controversial points in his theory, which are primarily related to the limited capabilities of the legal scholar and his general unwillingness to construct a single concept of law that would harmoniously include both the formal component and the arguments expressed within the framework of Raz's political and moral theory in favor of the connection of law with the phenomenon of power and the rational nature of the human mind. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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