[This book] discards the notion that law takes place within a framework that is independent of the structure of legal argument. It rejects the view that a set of legal presuppositions exists that are discoverable in the absence of legal argument, upon which legal argument is supposed to depend. The entire enterprise in which others are engaged seems to be based on a confusion between the justification [of the system]—which is that legitimation that results from the operation of the various [modalities]—and a hypothesized causal explanation for [law] derived from socio-political thcories.'

XREF: Connects to the author's broader thesis distinguishing legitimation from causal explanation in legal theory.

Philip Chase Bobbitt, Philip Chase Bobbitt - Refl…, loc. 181