T HE problem of the relationship of law and morality is basic both for political theory and for social policy. The following theses are an attempt to clarify this relationship. 1. The authority of law is not normative but situational. Law exerts compulsion by excluding alternatives. It is often supposed that the authority of law is to be understood in terms of values. Certain ends are desirable; certain values ought to be preserved; law is the instrument by which society preserves and enlarges its values. A society comes to be what it is as a consequence of beliefs about what ought to be. Respect for law is respect for the "ought," for human good; violation of law is revolt against or repudiation of the right and the good. Theoretical differences turn mainly upon questions of what values law is to serve and in whose interests those values are to be realized. This approach to legal theory, however, reverses the relationship of existence and value. The authority of law does not in fact rest upon any scheme of values or upon any set of interests. The authority of law is situational, and it cuts beneath all claims of value and interest. It does not rest upon the soundness of the claim that this or that is what ought to be but rather on the fact that there is no other way. The authority of law does not consist in the superiority of one alternative to another but in the fact that there is no tolerable alternative to what the law requires. Precisely insofar as a tolerable alternative emerges, the authority of law weakens. It is true that alternatives exist for human choice, but they exist ordinarily only in the context of law. Destroy that context and the possibility of exercising significant choice evaporates. Supply extralegal alternatives and the authority of law disappears. Many theories of law are not so much theories of its nature and function as theories concerning its uses. They assume that law is a means to an end and that its existence is to be justified in terms of the goals men seek to realize by its use. Such an approach to the problem of the nature and authority of law is no more appropriate here than it would be as an approach to the study of the nature of life. Life is not something that exists for a purpose; living beings may have purposes, in the sense that they adopt ends for themselves, and they may make use of other living beings for their purposes. But purposes exist only in the context of life itself, and it makes no sense to ask what may be the purpose of life as such. Goals of life are within life, not beyond it. Law is the life of a society. Religion, morality, and tradition all presuppose the existence of a social structure, and law is the process by which an orderly society exists. "Lawless society" is a contradiction in terms. If there are no ways by which conflicts can be resolved so that the way is cleared for action, if there are no definite procedures for carrying out the essential activities of the group, then there is no society. Men living in prox-