Governance Structures, Legal Systems, and the Concept of Law

Debate over the concept of law currently contrasts conceptual and interpretive accounts. This Article begins to elaborate a social-scientific conception of law as a subset of a concept of a governance structure. To begin, it distinguishes institutional structures, realized institutions, and functioning institutions. Governance structures consist of institutional structures that perform central tasks of governance.

Dworkin's interpretive conception of law extends over the domain of functioning institutions; positivist, conceptual accounts of law extend over the domain of institutional structures. From this perspective legal systems may be best understood as governance structures that satisfy the political value legality; different concepts of law offer different accounts of the value of legality and its relation to other political values of justice.