We have now called into doubt what so many have assumed to be obviously true, that law is coercive. Let's retrace the path that led to this doubt, to make certain that we have not gone astray. I had provisionally adopted Alan Wertheimer's two-prong analysis of the concept of coercion, and it is time to consider objections to it. A striking feature of the two-prong analysis is that it is “thoroughly moralized,” that is, both its choice prong and (more obviously) its proposal prong involve moral judgments. A number of theorists have made general objections to “moralized” accounts of coercion.

I will now explore these objections and also enquire whether any nonmoralized alternative analyses can save our pre-reflective intuition that law is coercive. I will also reconsider the possibility that the repugnant conclusion can be avoided by attending to contextual aspects of coercion claims. Finally, I will explore the possibility that the repugnant conclusion can be avoided within a moralized account of coercion.

OBJECTIONS TO MORALIZED ANALYSES

One objection to a moralized account of coercion goes this way: If the assertability of a coercion claim depends upon an assessment of the morality of the proposal made to the putative coercee, and the normative reasonableness of the options left to her, then to assert the coercion claim is to have judged that the coercer's act was morally defective. If that is so, then the phrase “justified coercion” is oxymoronic, because if conduct is coercive it is ipso facto unjustified.