One of the distinctive features of the obligation to obey the law is its content-independence. We ought to do what the law commandsbecausethe law commands it, and not because of the law's content—i.e., the independent merits of the actions it prescribes. Despite its popularity, the notion of content-independence is marked by ambiguity. In this paper, I first clarify what content-independence is. I then develop a simple test—the “content-independence test”—which allows us to establish whether any candidate justification of the obligation to obey the law delivers genuine content-independence. I apply this test to prominent such justifications and conclude that several of them, surprisingly, fail it.

中文翻译：

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政治义务的内容独立性：它是什么以及如何检验它

遵守法律义务的显着特征之一是其内容独立性。我们应该做法律命令的事因为法律命令它，而不是因为法律的内容——即它规定的行为的独立优点。尽管它很受欢迎，但内容独立性的概念却是模棱两可的。在本文中，我首先阐明了什么是内容独立性。然后，我开发了一个简单的测试——“内容独立性测试”——它使我们能够确定任何候选人对遵守法律义务的辩护是否提供了真正的内容独立性。我将此测试应用于突出的此类理由，并得出结论，其中有几个令人惊讶地失败了。