Mark C. Murphy

The aim of this paper is to take the first steps toward providing a refurbished consent theory of political authority, one that rests in part on a reconception of the relationship between the surrender of judgment and the authoritativeness of political institutions. On the standard view, whatever grounds political authority implies that one ought to surrender one's judgment to that of one's political institutions. On the refurbished view, it is the surrender of one's judgment – which can plausibly be considered a form of consent – that makes political institutions practically authoritative.

The moral formulation of philosophical anarchism is that most persons, even in just political communities, do not have a moral obligation to obey the law. The epistemological formulation of philosophical anarchism is that most persons are unjustified in believing that they have a moral obligation to obey the law. But the philosophical anarchists’ argument strategies do not, and in fact cannot, show that belief in the moral obligation to obey the law is unjustified. And, further, given that most persons in just political communities do believe that they are under such an obligation, the moral requirement that one ought to act in accordance with one’s conscience implies that most persons have a moral obligation to obey the law. Thus the moral formulation of philosophical anarchism is false and the epistemological formulation unjustified.