Abstract

In two fascinating papers, Jules Coleman has been considering an idea, first articulated and defended by Scott Shapiro in his forthcoming book Legality, that law calls for a moral semantics. In a recent paper, Coleman argues it is a conceptual truth that legal content stating behavioral requirements, whether construed as propositions or imperatives, can “truthfully be redescribed as expressing a moral directive or authorization” (Coleman 2007, 592). For example, the directive “mail fraud is illegal”expresses, if not that mail fraud is morally wrong, then the idea that we have a content‐independent moral reason for not committing mail fraud. In this essay, I will attempt to explicate and evaluate Coleman's arguments, as well as to determine what the “Redescription Thesis,” as I call it, amounts to.