Coercion and the Nature of Law

It is a commonplace that coercion forms part of the nature of law: Law is inherently coercive. But how well founded is this claim, and what would it mean for coercion to be part of the “nature” of law? This article suggests that the claim is grounded in our current conception of law. The main focus of the article, however, is upon two major lines of argument that attempt to establish a link between law and coercion: one based upon the law’s efficacy; the other upon the law’s normativity. It argues that the claim that law is necessarily coercive because it must be efficacious is mistaken—not necessarily on sociological or psychological grounds, but because it identifies law with the preconditions for its existence. On the other hand, the argument that law’s normativity is inherently linked to coercion contains an important truth—not because coercion is necessary to account for normativity, but because the scope of law’s claim to authority encompasses the right to authorize the use of coercion.