Escapable Law: John Gardner on Law and Morality

Morality judges law, but law does not judge morality. It counts against a law that it is immoral, but it does not count against a sound moral principle that it is illegal. John Gardner offers an intriguing explanation of this fact. He claims that we can always demand a non-legal reason for acting in accordance with the law, but that it makes no sense to ask for a non-moral reason for acting in accordance with morality: morality is 'inescapable'. I explore, but ultimately reject, this explanation. I have doubts about Gardner's account of the normativity of law, and about his notion of what it is for a norm to be 'inescapable'. I also have doubts about his view, shared by many natural lawyers that, in its paradigm case, law is morally obligatory. The asymmetry between the normative authority of law and morality is a feature of their (claimed) respective jurisdictions.