> ^^^^
> CB: Yes , I am agreeing. What I mean by "legal" is that the repressive
> apparatus of the state stands behind it, will enforce it.
>
JKS: That's not right -- first of all, a lot of law isn't orders backed by threats but rules that enable you to do things. Get married. Transfer property. Make new laws. Just for example. These rules don't involve coercive orders at all. This is important because much, maybe most of the law, is like this. I mean as it affects people's real lives.
And for the coercive sort of laws, not everything that the repressive apparatus will enforce is legal. If the cops beat up minorities with impunity, it's not the law that they can do so. They're acting lawlessly. Moreover, on your view, there's no way to distinguish between the _legitimate_ repressive apparatus -- the cops, whose existence and membership is after all defined by law -- and any gang of armed thugs. The Klan. A bunch of bandits. Anyone with a gun who can enforce his will.
In short, your theory of law is missing the notion of legal legitimacy -- the idea that there are groups or bodies in society that have something like a right to make rules that they and others will follow, and which should be obeyed because they are made by the competent authorities -- not just because you'll get in trouble if you break the rules.
Obviously, a legally legitimate law can be immoral. There is no guarantee that just becausea body has the right to make rules that it will make morally good rules. That is true even if the legislative (or whatever) body is democratic -- however you understand that, whether it is elected from competitive parties in a free election, as a liberal would want, or is a dicttotship that acts in the interest of the poor and the workers, as Charles would want (I don't say he'd accept that characterization of his views). Any government can make bad laws. That's not the point.
The point is that the has to be distinction between practices and institutions we'd count as laws, whether moral or not, and those that are just coercion, whether illegal or nonlegal. I mean, we make sucha dsitinction in ordinary life. If we are robbed, we recognized that someone has broken the law and we go to the cops. If the cops beat us up, we recognize that they have broken the law and we bring a politice brutality lawsuit. If the supreme Court upholds some evil interpretaion of the law allowing segregation or homophobic discrimination, we do what's necessary to change the law -- pass new statutes, try to have the bad decisions overturned. But all these activities depend our being able to tell which rules are legitimately law -- even if the legitimate law is also immoral.
> The judge could give a judgment and issue and order, but the appeals
court
> would overturn .
>
> I'm not catching what you are saying is unexpected or unusual about
> something being "legal".
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