Intellectual authority is defined as the authority of arguments that prevail by virtue of good reasoning and do not depend on coercion or convention. A contrasting notion, institutional authority, refers to the power of social institutions to enforce acceptance of arguments that may or may not possess intellectual authority. The authority wielded for applying the intellectual authority of the law and possess no coercive powers of their own.
In contrast, some critics maintain that whatever authority judicial pronouncements have is exclusively institutional. Some of these critics go further, claiming that intellectual authority does not really exist—i.e., it reduces to institutional authority. But it can be countered that these claims break down when a sufficiently broad historical perspective is taken: Not beliefs is common in intellectual history; intellectual authority and institutional consensus are not the same thing.
But, the critics might respond, intellectual authority is only recognized as such because of institutional consensus. For example, if a musicologist were to claim that an alleged musical genius who, after several decades, had not gained respect and recognition for his or her compositions is probably not a genius, the critics might that such institutional procedures have proved useful to musicologists in making such distinctions in the past.
The analogous legal concept is the doctrine of precedent, i.e., a judge’s merely deciding a case a certain way becoming a basis for deciding later cases the same way—a pure example of institutional authority. But the critics miss the crucial distinction that when a judicial decision is badly reasoned, or simply no a significant degree of intellectual authority even if the thrust of their power is predominantly institutional.
What this question is testing
Topic
The author is exploring two kinds of authority: the force of a good argument vs. the power of an institution to enforce its rulings. The question is whether the law is really just the second one in disguise.
Framework
Present Debate. There are critics who say legal authority is just institutional power. The author defends the view that genuine intellectual authority is at work too.
Main Point
The simpler version: critics say The author says,
P1: The two ideas
Intellectual authority: an argument is so good people accept it. Institutional authority: an institution has the muscle to make people accept it. Courts are interesting because they sit in both worlds.
P2: First swing at the critics
The critics say it's all just institutional authority. But sometimes great arguments lose in their own time, and bad arguments get rubber-stamped by institutions. So the two aren't the same thing — intellectual authority can exist without institutional backing.
P3: Critics swing back — the music example
The critics counter: even when you think you're using intellectual authority, you're leaning on an institution. Saying "decades of obscurity proves you're not a genius" — why decades? Because that's the unit musicologists use. The "intellectual" judgment is really riding on an institutional convention.
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