You Might be an Anarchist if ...

The article examines how three prominent legal theories—reductionism about practical authority, trigger theory of reason-giving, and natural law—each entail conceptual philosophical anarchism, defined as the view that law cannot create new reasons for action or obligations. Reductionists hold that all legitimate practical authority reduces to theoretical authority, implying law only informs pre-existing reasons rather than generating new ones. Trigger theorists, following David Enoch, argue that legal directives merely activate pre-existing conditional reasons rather than create new normative reasons, thereby limiting law’s normative force. Natural lawyers maintain that all legal reasons derive from natural law (God or reason), which means positive law cannot independently provide new reasons for action. The article concludes that only a few theorists, such as Hans Kelsen, Mark Greenberg, and Joseph Raz, offer accounts that might avoid this anarchistic implication by grounding legal normativity wholly within law itself or by integrating law and morality more fully.