Against Obligation: The Multiple Sources of Authority in a Liberal Democracy.

• Author: Schwartzman, Micah
• Position: Book review

AGAINST OBLIGATION: THE MULTIPLE SOURCES OF AUTHORITY IN A LIBERAL DEMOCRACY. By Abner S. Greene. (1) Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2012. Pp. ix + 333. $49.95 (cloth).

People embrace philosophical anarchism for different reasons. Sometimes anarchists adopt this view, which holds in part that there is no general moral duty to obey the law, (3) because they are disillusioned with or alienated from the modern state, which they may believe is oppressive, exploitative, or unjust. Others may be attracted by utopian ideals that have difficulty flourishing under existing political regimes. Sympathy for anarchism might also arise from confrontation with laws believed to be draconian, morally obtuse, or worse--for example, drug laws, prohibitions on homosexual conduct, or mandatory military conscription. In some cases, people become skeptical about the existence of political obligations because, despite the best efforts of generations of political philosophers, they have yet to encounter a persuasive argument for the proposition that states have a moral right to command their general obedience. (4)

Yet another path to philosophical anarchism might begin with reflection on the problem of religious exemptions from generally applicable laws. Twenty years ago, in the aftermath of Employment Division v. Smith, (5) Abner Greene proposed a novel theory for why the state ought to provide constitutional religious exemptions. (6) He argued that the two Religion Clauses of the First Amendment--the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause--were best interpreted as balancing against each other. Under the Establishment Clause, laws must be based primarily on secular purposes, rather than on religious convictions. The reason is that religious beliefs are not publicly accessible, and so relying expressly on such beliefs to justify laws would unfairly exclude nonbelievers. But at the same time, limiting the role of religious beliefs in the democratic process effectively excludes religious believers. Since their views are not represented in the process, they have no reason to obey the laws produced by it. To remedy this problem, the Free Exercise Clause provides religious exemptions from the law. If believers have no say in how the law is made, then at the very least, the law should account for their exclusion by accommodating them to the extent possible. (7)

Initially, this argument for religious exemptions might seem like a fairly straightforward application of a political process theory. Religious citizens are disadvantaged in the democratic process. As a result, courts should exercise judicial review in a manner that provides them with special protections in the form of constitutional exemptions from laws that substantially burden their beliefs and practices. But this theory can point toward more radical and anarchical possibilities. If citizens are owed legal exemptions because they have no reason to obey laws resulting from an exclusionary political process, perhaps they should receive exemptions whenever they conscientiously object to laws that they otherwise have no duty to obey. After all, political exclusion is only one reason why citizens might lack political obligations. If there are others, then perhaps the state should widen the scope of its legal exemptions to cover them as well.

In Against Obligation, Abner Greene develops this general line of argument. Without abandoning his earlier balancing theory of the Religion Clauses, he now argues for a broader and more ambitious set of claims focused on the idea of "permeable sovereignty," which holds that citizens have a plurality of obligations based on their religious and philosophical views, family responsibilities, ethnic and tribal affiliations, and so on (p. 20). These sources of obligation may conflict with the state's demands, and Greene argues that there is no reason to privilege the latter. Citizens should treat all of their obligations as having equal standing, rather than giving presumptive weight to their political obligations (pp. 2, 117). Moreover, Greene argues, when citizens have competing duties and lack political obligations, states should provide them with a form of exit through legal exemptions, unless doing so would threaten compelling state interests (p. 118).

In addition to rejecting conventional accounts of political obligation, Greene devotes two substantial chapters to arguing against what he calls "interpretive obligation" (p. 11), which includes fidelity to constitutional law and modes of legal interpretation that require deference to past authorities (such as original meaning or precedent) and to interpretive authorities (such as the Supreme Court). Just as citizens have plural sources of obligations that compete with their political obligations, legal interpreters confront diverse sources of legal meaning, none of which should be given presumptive authority. In short, according to Greene, citizens and public officials should both reject the general idea of fidelity to the law.

In showing how attacks on political obligation are continuous with challenges to constitutional fidelity and judicial supremacy, Against Obligation demonstrates the sustained force of a skeptical approach to a broad array of claims concerning legal authorities. Densely argued and provocative, the book should be of interest to lawyers concerned about matters of religious freedom, constitutional interpretation, and the obligations of judges and political officials. It should also interest philosophers who may be somewhat less familiar with the constitutional and judicial implications of a skeptical or anarchical approach to political obligation.

In what follows, after summarizing Greene's main arguments against political obligation and in favor of exemptions, I raise two questions about the position defended in the first half of the book, while leaving aside for purposes of this review the interesting and important discussions of interpretive obligations presented in the later chapters. The first question is whether Greene is committed to philosophical anarchism, despite his repeated and emphatic protestations to the contrary. The second is whether Greene's account of political obligation and his conception of permeable sovereignty are adequate to support a full range of religious exemptions, including some paradigmatic examples. Even if there are reasons to deny political obligation and to adopt a view near to, and perhaps identical with, philosophical anarchism, that theory may not be well-suited to justifying accommodations for many citizens who confront the law with competing religious and moral obligations. For those who aim to defend a robust exemption regime, anarchism may be less helpful in many cases than more conventional arguments based on the values of freedom and equality.

1. FROM OBLIGATION TO EXEMPTION

   The first half of Against Obligation is devoted to establishing two claims: first, that citizens lack general duties to obey the law and, correlatively, that states have no authority to impose them; and second, that states should provide legal exemptions as a partial remedy for their political illegitimacy. Before raising some questions about these claims, I provide a brief summary of Greene's main arguments for them.

   1. REJECTING POLITICAL OBLIGATION

      Greene begins his attack on political obligation by offering some parameters for his argument. He describes political obligations as moral requirements--whether duties or obligations (8)--to obey the law. These requirements are prima facie (or, more accurately, pro tanto) obligations, which are taken to be defeasible or open to being overridden by conflicting obligations. Such obligations are also content-independent, meaning that one has a duty to obey the law simply because it is the law, rather than because there is a moral reason to comply with the content of the law. Furthermore, political obligations must be general in the sense of applying to "all laws at all times" (p. 15), as well as to all citizens. In sum, Greene follows standard accounts of defining political obligation as a general, content-independent, defeasible, moral duty to obey the law (pp. 14-20). (9)

      Greene also endorses and defends the correlativity thesis, which holds that a state's political legitimacy is correlative with the existence of its citizens' political obligations (pp. 24-29). (10) Although Greene does not discuss the Hohfeldian logic of this thesis, the basic idea is that a legitimate state has a claim right to rule and that citizens have a correlative duty to obey. If citizens have no political obligations, then a state cannot have a right to rule. Thus, if a state's legitimacy is defined in terms of it having such a right, then the rejection of political obligation is also a rejection of the state's political legitimacy. As Greene writes, "[P]olitical legitimacy is correlated with political obligation-when one is present so is the other; when one is absent so is the other" (p. 27). Somewhat confusingly, Greene calls this the...