Obrigação de obedecer ao direito versus obediência à autoridade: respostas e impactos para o positivismo jurídico

Leandro Garcia Algarte Assunção

doi:10.17765/2176-9184.2025v25.e14009

Authors

Leandro Garcia Algarte Assunção Universidade Federal do Paraná https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8853-2666

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17765/2176-9184.2025v25.e14009

Keywords:

Obey the law, Prima facie obligation, The Authority Thesis

Abstract

Contextualization: The article aims to discuss the existence or not of an obligation to obey the right by members of a certain political community, even in its prima facie form, as well as whether their recognition is a necessary condition for the effectiveness of a legal system. From this foundational theoretical basis, it seeks to demonstrate the compatibility between the absence of a moral obligation to obey the law and the thesis of the authority of law, especially in the terms developed by Joseph Raz, in order to identify how the right to rigor has a role to play in the decisions of subjects under its incidence.

Objective: Grounded on the peremptory power of political authority and the preemptive force of its directives, the text intends to defend the positivist stance about that the law is identified as a limited domain of rules, understood as prescriptive generalizations endowed with special normativity and authoritativeness capable of providing reasons for action and generate genuine obligations.

Methodology: Exploratory-descriptive research process and, as for the procedural method of research, documentary bibliographic methodology focused on the references and theoretical sources identified, based on logical-deductive argumentation.

Results: The essay demonstrate, in a counterintuitive way, the negation of the existence of this political obligation, even if prima facie form, and seeks to deduce arguments that it is not confused with obedience to authority, to maintain that denying conceptual validity to the thesis of the general obligation to obey the law does not compromise the main postulates of legal positivist view.

Author Biography

Leandro Garcia Algarte Assunção, Universidade Federal do Paraná

Doutorando e Mestre em Direito do Estado pela Universidade Federal do Paraná. Promotor de Justiça do Ministério Público do Estado do Paraná (MPPR).

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