Modern legal theory often assumes that law is necessary because human beings are flawed, self-interested, or morally imperfect. Yet this assumption has long been challenged by a striking thought experiment: would law still be needed in a society of morally perfect beings? Contemporary legal theorist Joseph Raz famously answered in the affirmative, arguing that even a society of angels would require law. Surprisingly, a closely related insight can be found centuries earlier in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, writing on divine government and the state of innocence.
Anna Lukina revisits foundational questions of jurisprudence by identifying a convergence between legal positivism and natural law theory in the work of Raz and Aquinas. Despite their deep disagreements about the nature of law, Raz and Aquinas both recognise that law performs an indispensable coordinative function, one that persists even in ideal or radically non-ideal conditions.
By tracing this shared insight across contexts ranging from morally perfect societies to wicked regimes, post-legal orders, and international law, the lecture challenges conventional accounts of legal coercion and authority. It invites a reconsideration of why law matters, not merely as a constraint on wrongdoing, but as a framework for coordination in complex social worlds. In doing so, the event opens a fresh perspective on enduring questions at the intersection of jurisprudence, political philosophy, and legal theory.
Guest speaker: Anna Lukina is Fellow in Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Bye-Fellow at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge. Her research interests include legal theory, legal history, and public law.
Date: 3 March 2026, 5:30 pm
Venue: Budapest, 1113 Tas vezér utca 3-7., Kinizsi Pál Room
----------------------------------------------
MCC students can earn credit for actively participating in the event, provided they read the required chapters and paper(s) and prepare three questions for the Q&A session of the research seminar.
Questions related to the required reading must be submitted to Kálmán Pócza at pocza.kalman@mcc.hu by 11:00 PM on 1 March, 2026.
Required Reading: Please contact Kálmán Pócza to obtain the electronic version of the paper.
Submission Deadline: 1 March 2026, 11:00 PM
Previous Research Seminars:
- Martin Loughlin (London School of Economics): Against Constitutionalism
- Nigel Biggar (Univeristy of Oxford): What’s Wrong with Rights?
- Asanga Welikala (University of Edinburgh): The Common Good and Comparative Constitutional Laws
- John Wyatt (Faraday Institute Cambridge): Right To Die?
- John Larkin (former Attorney General for Northern Ireland): Judicial Power in the United Kingdom
- Michael Freeden (University of Oxford): Concealed Silences and Inaudible Voices in Political Thinking
- Lee J. Strang (Ohio State University): Originalism's Promise: A Natural Law Account of the American Constitution
- Gonzalo Candia (Catholic University of Chile): The Constitution-Making Process in Chile 2019-2024
- Sergio Verdugo (IE University of Madrid): Is it time to abandon the theory of constituent power?
- Aileen Kavanagh (Trinity College Dublin): The Collaborative Constitution
- Scott L. Cummings (University of California Los Angeles): Lawyers and Movements
- Stephen Tierney (University of Edinburgh): Constituent Power in Federal States
- Stefan Auer (University of Hong Kong): European Disunion: Democracy, Sovereignty and the Politics of Emergency
- Dieter Grimm (Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin): A View from the Bench: Personal Reflections on the Practice of Constitutional Adjudication
- Yuan Yi Zhu (University of Leiden): Revisiting the British Origins of the European Convention on Human Rights
- David Edmonds (University of Oxford): Effective Altruism: A Philosophical Reckoning
2026. március 3. 17:30 - 19:00
Twitter
