Gustav Radbruch’s Theory of Legal Obligation

Gustav Radbruch characterizes the fundamental relation between law and morality in his Legal Philosophy in a complex fashion. This forms the backdrop of his theory of legal validity in the same work, where Radbruch advocates for a dual theory of legal validity that provides for different criteria stemming from two different standpoints: the standpoint of the judge and the standpoint of the citizen. On this basis, Radbruch claims that, while intolerably unjust statutes may lack legal validity from the standpoint of the citizen, they always remain valid from the standpoint of the judge. From this theoretical perspective, citizens may regard certain statutes as invalid, which is to say that they do not give rise to legal obligations. Nevertheless, Radbruch argues that in such situation citizens are legitimately subjected to coercion, but exclusively as a matter of factual power rather than legal obligation.