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Law as an Artifact

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Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy

Introduction

On a very broad reading, the idea that law is an artifact can be understood in the sense that law is artificial in character. In this sense it roughly means that law is posited or positive law, law understood as the creation of human beings, the product of human actions, and not something occurring naturally. However, a growing interest in the theories of artifacts within general philosophy (analytic metaphysics in particular) at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century (Lowe 1983; Hilpinen 1992, 1993, 2011; Dipert 1993; Thomasson 2003, 2007, 2009, 2014; Baker 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010; Elder 2007; Houkes and Vermaas 2009; Preston 2009, among others) and social ontological theories (especially Searle 1995, 2010; Tuomela 2002, 2007, 2013) prompted legal philosophers (both legal positivists and natural law theorists) to inquire into the ontological implications of the thesis that law is an artifact, i.e., to explicate, by using the conceptual...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

    Luka Burazin

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  1. Luka Burazin
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Correspondence to Luka Burazin .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for International & Comparative Law, University of Baltimore School of Law, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Mortimer Sellers

  2. Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften, University of Salzburg, Austria, Salzburg, Austria

    Stephan Kirste

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Theory, Sociology and Philosophy of Law, University of Belgrade, Faculty of Law, Belgrade, Serbia

    Miodrag Jovanovic

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Burazin, L. (2019). Law as an Artifact. In: Sellers, M., Kirste, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_217-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_217-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-94-007-6730-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-007-6730-0

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