Two Kinds of Authority

We are all familiar with two kinds of authority from childhood. One is when someone tells us that we should believe what they say or follow their advice because they know better than we do on some particular subject. This is the form of authority we see on television news shows and in court when an expert is called in to discuss a subject. The other kind of authority is the kind that tells us to do as we are told simply because the person telling us is somehow entitled to control us. This is the kind of authority invoked when a police officer tells us to “move along.” Parents of young children are a special combination of both kinds of authority.

House is the consummate authority on medical diagnostics. As such, he represents the form of authority philosophers call “theoretical authority.” The reason for this term is quite clear in House’s case. The members of House’s team help him to perform difficult diagnoses by offering their own theories about what is wrong with a patient. But it is always House who makes the call about which theories are worth testing and which are wrong. He is a theoretical authority in the sense that he is in a position to decide which theories are right and wrong. His authority rests upon the fact that we have good reason to believe what he tells us to believe about what’s wrong with us.

Tritter, as a cop who doesn’t appear to have any special knowledge (even, we see later, of the law), represents a pure form of the other kind of authority, which philosophers call “practical authority.” Such authority is practical in that it claims to control our decisions about what to do and how to act. When Tritter tells House to pull over, he’s supposed to pull over just because it is a cop telling him to do so. It is also significant that this authority is frequently backed up with a real or implied threat of one kind or another. If we don’t pull over, we’ll be arrested and sent to jail. While the threat of punishment may not be strictly necessary for all forms of practical authority, it does appear in the forms we see most commonly: legal authority, parental authority, and workplace authority (where we are supposed to do what the boss says because it is the boss that says so, or else we’re fired).

Since the practical authority is actually trying to get us to do something, it seems like threats are needed in case we don’t do as we are told, especially because we are frequently told to do things that are either against our interest or that we simply don’t want to do. On the other hand, when it comes to the advice of a theoretical authority, we are getting better information, usually about what is in our interest (even if only because it’s usually in our interest to believe the truth). Theoretical authority is telling us what is true and what to believe; if we don’t listen, we have only ourselves to blame.

Patients do what the doctor tells them to do because the implication behind the doctor’s direction is that it will help the patient get better. But people also have expectations about how much information a doctor needs to have before drawing a conclusion about the patient’s condition. This is what makes House’s life so frustrating (and one reason, along with sheer boredom, he hates clinic duty so much). Basically, patients don’t realize just how much theoretical authority House has as a result of his vast expertise. He doesn’t need to test Tritter’s rash because he already knows what it is and how to cure it. But, like so many other patients, Tritter can’t believe that any doctor is as good as House and can diagnose the rash without running tests. Of course, his mistrust of House is exacerbated by House’s acerbic bedside manner. Patients react to that by thinking that it is House’s arrogance that causes him think he knows what’s wrong with them rather than his expertise. (In this, House’s personality creates its own dissatisfaction by undermining his credibility, forcing him to do more to convince patients of his accuracy.) When it comes to theoretical authority, ultimately, it is still the authority’s greater expertise and knowledge that gives a compelling reason for us to listen, agree, and follow advice.

Practical authority figures like Tritter, however, are in a slightly different situation. Sure, they usually have some kind of threat (like jail) to back up their orders; but that can’t be enough to justify those orders. As the influential twentieth-century legal philosopher H. L. A. Hart pointed out,¹ if the only justification offered for the practical authority is the threat of jail, the law would be no different from a mugging in the street. Hart was responding to the nineteenth-century legal philosopher John Austin, who believed that laws are simply commands backed by the threat of force.² Hart noticed that when a mugger points a gun at you and says, “Your money or your life,” we usually think that you are under no obligation to give your money; you are simply being forced to do so. Put another way, if you could get away from the situation with both your money and your life, everyone would think you should be congratulated (although perhaps also scolded for taking risks). But we don’t usually think that people should be congratulated for getting away with breaking the law (unless we think the law is wrong, or we happen to be in cahoots with the lawbreaker). So something else has to justify the law’s claim to practical authority.

Authority and Service

This is where the contemporary philosopher Joseph Raz steps in with his service conception of authority.³ He suggests that the law, or any practical authority, is justified when it gets people who are supposedly subject to that authority to do better at following reasons that already apply to them than they do on their own. In other words, practical authority is justified when we do better by listening to it than by figuring things out on our own. More generally, the claim is that we do better at leading the kinds of lives we want to lead or ought to lead (doing right, avoiding harm, pursuing success, and so on) when we follow the directions of the practical authority. This is clearly the case with parents. Since children are much less aware of the reasons that apply to them (how to do right, how to avoid harm, and so on) than are many adults, the practical authority of parents to direct the behavior of children is generally justified.

One important, although frequently overlooked, aspect of Raz’s service conception of authority is that it bases practical authority ultimately upon a certain kind of theoretical authority. If the law’s claims to practical authority are justified (which is admittedly a big if), it is likely because the legal officials (including police officers) are in a better position to harmonize people’s behavior because of their position as coordinators of social behavior.

When the officer tells you to move along, or not to turn right, the authority she has to do so is based on her being in a better position to know where the roads are closed or where there is greater traffic. The purpose of traffic-directing officers is to coordinate traffic flow in a more efficient way by placing them in strategic locations and to have them direct traffic in those more efficient ways. This, in turn, either gets you to your destination more quickly than if you took the route of your choice, or it gets you to make a small sacrifice in your time so that the majority of people can get to their destinations as quickly as possible. In this second case, one could say that one has a moral reason to make that sacrifice, but without the traffic cop telling you where to go, you wouldn’t know how to make that sacrifice. So, according to Raz, legal authority is justified, at least in part, when legal authorities are “experts” in knowing what people have good reasons to do, especially when those people don’t know it as well themselves.

A Problem

The problem with this conception of authority arises when certain individuals are more expert than the legal officials. If practical authority is ultimately justified by an appeal to a certain kind of theoretical authority, then that practical authority loses any justification in the face of superior theoretical authority.

One might think that Tritter was just a vindictive cop out for revenge and therefore any authority he had by virtue of his position was not justified. But the picture is slightly more complicated. Tritter said that his pursuit of House was based on his belief that a drug-addicted doctor like House would eventually start harming patients. In essence, Tritter claimed his enforcement of the law was for the good of both House and his patients: House, because it would relieve his addiction, and the patients, because they would have been endangered by House’s addiction. In this, the law is arguably written so as to get people to comply better with the reasons that already apply to them. A doctor in House’s position would usually have a good reason to stop treating patients. Patients usually have a good reason not to be treated by doctors like House.

What is ignored by Tritter and this analysis is House’s practically superhuman expertise, and perhaps the particularities of his field. People turn to House when they cannot get a proper diagnosis by other doctors. House’s ability to diagnose difficult cases transcends his Vicodin addiction. This was established all the way back in the first season episode “Detox,” when House took a bet from Cuddy to go without Vicodin for a week to show he wasn’t addicted. At the time he protested to Cuddy, “The pills don’t make me high, they make me neutral.” He won the bet but still admitted to Wilson that he was an addict, saying that the pills took away his pain and enabled him to do his job.

His ability to save lives justifies the rejection of the usual thoughts about what would be in patients’ interests when confronted by a drug-addicted doctor. Hence House’s own theoretical authority undermines the justification of Tritter’s practical authority, showing the inherent tension between these two kinds of authority.

Still, there is a similarity in the relationship of each kind of authority to those over whom the authority is exercised. Compared to House, patients are a very ignorant bunch. Compared to Tritter, people are a very powerless bunch and are, furthermore, ignorant of what is in their own best interests when they run afoul of the law. This is highlighted by House and Tritter’s shared refrain: “Everybody lies.” People lie to both kinds of authority because they are ignorant. People usually lie when they think they are protecting their interests by doing so.

When they are confronted by a theoretical authority like House, they don’t realize that for him to provide an accurate diagnosis, he needs complete and accurate information about them and their symptoms. They don’t realize it’s in their best interest to tell the (whole) truth, thinking that what they withhold or alter could not possibly be relevant. As an example, in the episode “Daddy’s Boy,” the father of a patient told House and his team that he ran a construction company, expecting it would lead to more favorable treatment for his son than if the doctors knew the truth, which was that he ran a junkyard. It is only after this fact becomes known that House can solve the case (realizing that the patient has radiation poisoning), too late, unfortunately, for the man’s son. Of course, this kind of behavior would be very frustrating to a theoretical authority trying to act in the patient’s interest. The very person in whose interest the authority is giving advice is undermining its ability to do so.

We are familiar with an analogous situation with legal authorities from any number of police dramas. People lie to the police thinking that by doing so they will protect their privacy or hide minor illicit deeds. What they don’t realize is that by doing so, they end up becoming the focus of even more suspicion once the lie is found out. Even when it is the actual culprit of a serious crime who is lying and his guilt is discovered, the fact that he tried to cover up his crime is usually used as a reason to compound the punishment by prosecutors.

But when people are confronted by a practical authority like Tritter, the picture is still slightly more complicated. Practical authority, when justified, does not necessarily mean telling people what is in their individual best practical interest. Instead, it might also be telling them what they have good moral reasons to do. But of course many people would rather pursue their personal practical interests than do the right thing. Practical authorities frequently encounter people who are lying because they prefer to pursue selfish interests.

As the season progresses, Tritter proceeds to pressure Wilson and House’s team to give evidence against House. After finding out that House’s prescriptions for Vicodin came from Wilson’s pad, Tritter freezes Wilson’s bank accounts and suspends his prescription privileges. Tritter tries to bribe Foreman by offering a favorable parole hearing and early release for his incarcerated brother. He tries to manipulate Chase into spying on House by reminding him that he did it before (in the first season, for the hospital chairman Vogler), claiming House will assume he’s doing it anyway. From Tritter’s perspective, these tactics are legally justified to get the information necessary to prosecute House and thereby protect public safety. Since the practical authority supposedly works in the public good, there also appears to be more justification for sacrificing individuals’ interests to that important good. The more serious the risk to the public good, the more ready the practical authority might be to sacrifice individuals’ interests.

In the case of Wilson, this even extended to sacrificing the interests of his patients. After having his prescription-writing privileges suspended in “Whac-a-Mole,” Wilson asked Cameron to write them. Cameron agreed but said she would need to sit in on meetings with his patients since everyone was under Tritter’s scrutiny. Cameron’s presence causes patients to mistrust Wilson and to suspect he’s been making mistakes in their prescriptions. By the end of the episode, Wilson has decided to shut down his practice entirely.

In the conclusion of this subplot (“Words and Deeds”), however, the judge rebukes Tritter for his single-minded pursuit of House by these means. There is a difference between the law and the officials who enforce and implement that law. In essence, the judge understood that Tritter’s vendetta and methods of pursuing House were neither in the public interest nor a justified exercise of practical authority. In another way of putting it: Tritter’s actions exceeded his mandate. Plainclothes police detectives aren’t usually found doing DUI stops. While a detective might have some discretion and latitude in protecting the public interest, that authority is subservient to the judge’s, who arguably is in a better position to decide what is really in the public interest and by what means it may be pursued.

The courtroom scene also highlighted the tension between practical and theoretical authority. Cuddy perjures herself in order to save House from being formally charged with drug violations and sent to jail. To this viewer, it seemed pretty clear that the judge suspected that Cuddy was lying. (The judge even commented on House’s having some very good friends and hoping that he deserved them.) Normally, if a judge believes that a witness has committed perjury, the judge can threaten the witness with jail unless the witness tells the truth, and the witness can face prosecution for the perjury, regardless. However, it was clear to Cuddy and possibly the judge that House’s extraordinary medical expertise (his theoretical authority) justifies trumping the usual rules (the practical authority of the law). So in the end, if this interpretation is correct, the law itself recognized an exception to its authority and that its practical authority must bow to greater theoretical authority. However, any exceptions must be carefully limited or risk undermining the authority of the law as a whole. So, the law grants its exception with a warning attached, voiced by the judge: “Rules and laws apply to everyone. You are not as special as you think.”⁴

NOTES

1 H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law (1961), eds. Penelope A. Bulloch and Joseph Raz, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).

2 John Austin, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined; and, the Uses of the Study of Jurisprudence (1832), ed. H. L. A. Hart (Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 1998).

3 Joseph Raz, The Authority of Law: Essays on Law and Morality (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press, 1979); Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press, 1986); Joseph Raz, “The Problem of Authority: Revisiting the Service Conception,” Minnesota Law Review 90 (2006): 1003.

4 Many thanks to Tamar Zeffren and Daniel Friedman for comments and additional episode suggestions, to Sara Morrison of www.televisionwithoutpity.com for compendious and humorous episode plot summaries, and to Celeste Cleary for the link.