Kant’s conception of legal change

This chapter provides an account of how I. Kant conceived the topic of legal change in a legal framework. It discusses the Kant’s emphasis on the attention one should pay to the context in question in which a legal development or change is called for – something that displays his concern for divergent historical and cultural circumstances while framing and implementing the law. The resources that Kant employs to ground legal normativity are diverse, but let us first revise one which paradigmatically has drawn a lot of attention from Kant’s readers. The sources of legal normativity to which Kant resorts are manifold, and it is difficult to determine if they all have the same strength in all different contexts or if one could establish a hierarchy among them. A final important aspect of legal change in Kant’s thought concerns the ways in which the demands for such changes can be made. ©2019 Taylor and Francis.