Overview

The question of whether coercion is a necessary or contingent feature of governance by law is a historically complex aspect of this 'modalist' trend in jurisprudential thinking. The nature of the relation between law and coercion has been elaborated by means of a variety of modally qualified accounts all converging in a more or less committing response to whether the language, concept or essence of law as a system of governance necessarily entails the coercive character of this system. A theory of lawmaking is a conceptual precursor to a jurisprudential theory of coercion. This Element proposes and defends a reconfiguration of the terms in which legal philosophers can disagree about the coercive character of governance by law. Whether the metric approach offers a better explanation of existing problems or fabricates a new problem that has the semblance of an existing problem remains to be seen.