Abstract

Conceptual jurisprudence is concerned to explicate the concept of law and other concepts central to core legal practices, as we understand them. The centrality of obligation-talk to legal practice is obvious, as the very point of litigation is to resolve disputes regarding the obligations of the various parties. In this essay, I argue that the general concept of obligation – of which social, legal, and moral obligation are subtypes – includes a conceptual moral constraint. Just as only a very good person can count as a “saint,” only a system of norms that satisfies certain moral norms can count as giving rise to “obligations.” Accordingly, I argue, as a conceptual matter, that only those institutional systems of social norms that satisfy some threshold level of moral respectability have the capacity to create obligations.