In this article I analyze the speech of the Laws in Plato’s Crito from a jurisprudential perspective. More specifically I explore the Laws’ views about the authority of law. I offer new interpretations of their famous ‘persuade or obey’ alternative and of their arguments about their superior moral status and the agreements of the citizens with them. I also explore the rather neglected topic of the mental attitude towards their authority that they demand from the citizens and conclude with a discussion of their understanding of the relation between law and morality. I approach the speech of the Laws as a historian of legal thought and try to locate their arguments firmly within both the context of the ancient Athenian legal system and the context of Platonic philosophy.

In comparison to the speech of the Laws, the dialectic between Crito and Socrates at the beginning of the Crito has received little attention. In this paper I argue that it contains an important philosophical message. It illustrates that the many's failure to follow Socrates' principles, like his principle of non-retaliation, is due to the intrinsic fragility of true beliefs. Though the many can understand Socrates' values and may accept his principles if he argues with them long enough, they may fail to hold on to his principles when confronted with the difficulties of life. Crito's failure to deliberate Socratically at the beginning of the Crito exemplifies the many's predicament.

In this paper I address the issue of the normativity of instrumental rules (for example, legal rules). On the one hand, I criticize Scott Shapiro's “constraint model” of instrumental rule-following according to which instrumental rules have motivational clout qua rules: the agent conforms to them simply because they are rules. On the other, I argue for a purely epistemic account of instrumental rule-following. According to this account, instrumental rules inform the agent which action she is required to perform but do not get her to act. Rather the agent is motivationally guided by the reasons for which she adopted the instrumental rules.