Coercion and the Nature of Law
Kenneth Einar Himma
Reviews and Awards
"Coercion and the Nature of Law is a welcome and needed addition to the jurisprudential literature: it defends the possibility and value of discovering the nature of law, it defends a version of conceptual analysis, it revisits a long-standing debate about the role of coercion in law, and it offers an intriguing merger of conceptual analysis, artifact theory, and functional theory." -- Brian H. Bix, Revus
"Himma has convincingly shown that coercion is fundamental to explaining the role of law in practical reasoning and has provided intelligent responses to the arguments of mainstream philosophers like Hart and Raz. This achievement cannot be understated." -- Thomas Bustamante, Revus
"In addition to the clarity and rare precision with which Himma argues his theses, I greatly appreciated two aspects of his book that I consider fundamental in any good philosophy of law: (1) the conviction that coercion can be adequately addressed only within an overall theory of law, which is indeed the one the author offers; (2) the idea that each conception of law inevitably presumes methodological choices, choices that must be expressed and justified." -- Anna Pintore, Revus
"Kenneth Himma's Coercion and the Nature of Law is a thoughtful and thought-provoking book. It constitutes a landmark in the current trend of renewed interest among Anglo-American legal philosophers in the relationship between law and coercion." -- Pablo A. Rapetti, Revus
"It is best received, I think, as a study in the psychology of law – one that takes claims about law as such ... and fills in any lacunae with reference to empirical observations about human nature, our particular psychologies, and about law as we see and experience it -- and it gets a lot right." -- Kara Woodbury-Smith, Revus