D.D. Raphael's views on Political Obligation

Most students can list consent, benefit and fair play as grounds of obligation without ever being asked whether any of them actually works. D. D. Raphael, a moral philosopher who wrote specifically on the concept of political obligation, is worth knowing precisely because he refused to accept any of these grounds at face value and insisted the duty be given a genuine moral justification.

In two minutes

D. D. Raphael argued that political obligation must rest on a real moral justification and cannot simply be assumed from the fact that a law exists, that citizens habitually obey it, or that a State happens to hold power.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Political Science – II: Foundations of Political Obligation on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.