A couple of months ago, Marc and I recorded a Legal Spirits episode with Julia Mahoney and Steve Smith on whether classical legal theory, which rejects positivism’s sharp distinction between law and morality, is ready for a comeback in American law–and whether that would be, on balance, a good thing. Obviously, something is in the air. This month, Harvard releases a new book by University of Michigan law professor Scott Hershovitz that addresses the relationship between law and morality and that takes a definite position on the question. The book is titled Law is a Moral Practice. Here’s the description from the Harvard website:

What is law? And how does it relate to morality? It’s common to think that law and morality are different ways of regulating our lives. But Scott Hershovitz says that this is a mistake: law is a part of our moral lives. It’s a tool we use to adjust our moral relationships. The legal claims we advance in court, Hershovitz argues, are moral claims. And our legal conflicts are moral conflicts.

Law Is a Moral Practice supplies fresh answers to fundamental questions about the nature of law and helps us better appreciate why we disagree about law so deeply. Reviving a neglected tradition of legal thought most famously associated with Ronald Dworkin, Hershovitz engages with important legal and political controversies of our time, including recent debates about constitutional interpretation and the obligations of citizens and officials to obey the law.

Leavened by entertaining personal stories, guided by curiosity rather than ideology, moving beyond entrenched dichotomies like the opposition between positivism and natural law, Law Is a Moral Practice is a thought-provoking investigation of the philosophical issues behind real-world legal debates.