Norms conferring public or private powers, i.e., the competence to issue other norms, play a very important rôle in law. But there is no agreement among legal philosophers about the nature of such norms. There are two main groups of theories, those that regard them as a kind of norms of conduct (either commands or permissions) and those that regard them as non-reducible to other types of norms. I try to show that reductionist theories are not quite acceptable; neither the (...) command-variety (Kelsen, Alf Ross inOn Law and Justice), nor the permission-variety (von Wright, Kanger, Lindahl) provide a satisfactory account of competence norms.Among the authors who maintain that competence norms are different from (and hence not reducible to) norms of conduct are Hart, Ross inDirectives and Norms, and Searle. Ross and Searle distinguish between regulative and constitutive rules as two radically different kinds of rules and classify competence norms among constitutive rules. This distinction runs parallel to von Wright's distinction between rules that are prescriptions and determinative rules. While the first regulate actions (by commanding, prohibiting, or permitting them), determinative rules define certain concepts. To view competence norms as (partial) definitions of certain legal concepts (like those of legislator, judge, etc.) seems to open interesting perspectives and to shed light on at least one aspect of these elusive norms. (shrink)

Some important ideas in Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law can be traced back to Kantian tradition, which has been very influential in Kelsen's thought, particularly in his early period. Among them we find the distinction between two radically different worlds (the world of facts and the world of norms), the normativity of legal science and the idea of validity as a binding force, based on the famous doctrine of the basic norm. These tenets and, especially, the use of a normative (...) concept of validity prove to be incompatible with Kelsen's positivistic programme of a value‐free legal science. The science of law cannot state that legal norms are obligatory or binding without trespassing the limits of Kelsen's ideal of a legal science; on the other hand, it is possible to define the concept of a legal system without resorting to the basic norm. So, if Kelsen is to be regarded as a consequent positivist, the Kantian ingredients of his theory must be rejected and the descriptive concept of validity as membership must be substituted for the normative notion of validity as a binding force. (shrink)

This paper criticizes Alexy's argument on the necessary connection between law and morality. First of all, the author discusses some aspects of the notion of the claim to correctness. Basically, it is highly doubtful that all legal authorities share the same idea of moral correctness. Secondly, the author argues that the claim to correctness is not a defining characteristic of the concepts of “legal norm” and “legal system”. Hence, the thesis of a necessary connection between law and morality based on (...) such claim cannot be accepted. (shrink)

Eugenio Bulygin is a distinguished representative of legal science and legal philosophy as they are known on the European continent - no accident, given the role of the civil law tradition in his home country, Argentina. Over the past half-century, Bulygin has engaged virtually all major legal philosophers in the English-speaking countries, including H.L.A. Hart, Ronald Dworkin, and Joseph Raz. Bulygin's essays, several written together with his eminent colleague and close friend Carlos E. Alchourrón, reflect the genre familiar from Alf (...) Ross's On Law and Justice, Hans Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law, and Georg Henrik von Wright's Norm and Action. Bulygin's wide-ranging interests include most of the topics found under the rubric of analytical jurisprudence - interpretation and judicial reasoning, validity and efficacy of law, legal positivism and the problem of normativity, completeness and consistency of the legal system, the nature of legal norms, and the role of deontic logic in the law. The reader will take delight in the often agreeably unorthodox character of Bulygin's views and in his hard-hitting arguments in defence of them. He challenges the received opinion on gaps in the law, on legal efficacy, on permissory norms, and on the criteria for legal validity. Bulygin's essays have been wellnigh inaccessible in the past, appearing in specialized journals, often in Spanish or German. They are now available for the first time in an English-language collection. (shrink)

According to Raz there are no legal gaps originating in the silence of law. Such graps require that there should be no reason to perform an action and no conclusive permission to omit that action. Raz claims that such a situation leads to a contradiction and hence is impossible. This means that all legal systems are necessarily complete.In this paper I argue that the Razian argument against gaps begs the question, the concept of conclusive permission is inadequate for characterizing completeness (...) and gaps and must be replaced by a stronger notion, and legal gaps due to the absence of legal regulations are possible and hence the problem of completeness of legal systems is an empirical question that cannot be solved by logical means alone. (shrink)

Este trabajo analiza los aspectos más destacados de la polémica entre Juan Carlos Bayón y Eugenio Bulygin acerca de las lagunas jurídicas, el principio de prohibición y el alcance de la discreción judicial. En esta disputa, Bulygin defiende cuatro tesis centrales, enunciadas en Normative Systems : una cuidadosa distinción entre normas y proposiciones normativas es esencial para resolver el problema de las lagunas jurídicas, la versión débil del principio de prohibición no sirve para mostrar que no existen lagunas, la versión (...) fuerte del principio de prohibición es verdadera solo cuando el sistema es completo, y en casos de lagunas jurídicas, los jueces tienen discreción para resolver estas situaciones. Sin embargo, Bayón señala que el problema no es la falta de distinción entre normas y proposiciones normativas sino el desacuerdo acerca de cuándo una solución jurídica es concluyente. La diferencia entre soluciones prima facie y concluyente es esencial porque en ciertas situaciones, el derecho no da una respuesta pero tampoco deja espacio para la discrecionalidad judicial. Según Bayón, en estos casos el principio de prohibición "todo lo que no está prohibido está permitido" juega un papel fundamental. Este trabajo muestra que los argumentos de Bayón son insuficientes para rechazar las tesis clásicas defendidas por Bulygin. In this paper I analyze the most relevant aspects of the controversy between Juan Carlos Bayón and Eugenio Bulygin about the existence of legal gaps, the so called "principle of prohibition" and the scope of judicial discretion. In this debate, Bulygin defends four classical theses advanced in his wellknown book, Normative Systems : a careful distinction between norms and norm propositions is actually needed in order to solve the problem of legal gaps, the analytical truth of the weak version of the principle of prohibition cannot guarantee the completeness of legal systems, the strong version of the principle of prohibition is true only if legal systems are complete, and judges have discretion in cases of legal gaps. However, Bayón claims that the problem is not the lack of distinction between norms and norm proposition but rather the identification of conclusive legal solutions. Conclusive legal solutions must be distinguished from the prima facie solutions provided by explicitly enacted norms. According to Bayón, the difference between conclusive and prima facie solutions is essential in legally irrelevant cases; in such cases the principle of prohibition plays an essential role because it entails the rejection of judicial discretion. In this paper I claim that the arguments advanced by Bayón fail to provide a sound ground for discarding the classical theses defended by Bulygin. (shrink)

Las respuestas que siguen abarcan los demás trabajos que fueron presentados en SADAF, y otros que fueron enviados ulteriormente. No siguen el orden de los expositores, ni el orden en que redacté las respuestas. Más bien, aparecen en la forma elegida por el editor para adecuarlas a su distribución en los dos números de Análisis Filosófico. No queda excluida la posibilidad de que, al redactarlas, yo haya recurrido en primer término a aquellas críticas que me parecieron más destructivas, sin que (...) esto implique que les haya atribuido a esos trabajos mayor importancia que a los demás. Agradezco a todos los autores su participación en esteintercambio de ideas. (shrink)

Partial proceedings of the 17th World Congress, International Association for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, Bologna, 1995.

En uno de los ataques más reiterados a Darwin, que todavía subsiste en la literatura actual, se señala que la teoría de la selección natural es tautológica, analítica o, al menos, irrefutable. En docenas de artículos, diversos autores han señalado las condiciones en que la selección natural quedaría refutada, intentando mostrar que no carece de contenido empírico. La estrategia seguida en este trabajo será otra. Teniendo en cuenta que la crítica de tautologicidad o irrefutabilidad ha sido esgrimida contra leyes fundamentales (...) de otras teorías, insertaré la discusión en un marco metateórico más amplio. Para discutir el estatus del segundo principio de la mecánica clásica, Moulines introduce el concepto de "principio guía". Los principios guía no serían contrastables directamente, sino a través de especializaciones. Desde mi punto de vista, considerar a la selección natural como principio guía permitiría explicar por qué muchos la han considerado tautológica y cómo esto no implica vacuidad. One of the most repeated objections to Darwin, still present in contemporary literature, outlines that theory of natural selection is tautological, analytical or at least irrefutable. There are many authors that point out the conditions in which natural selection would be refuted, trying to prove that it doesn't lack of empirical content. This essay will work on a different strategy. Taking into account that tautological or irrefutable criticism has been put forward against other theories' fundamental laws; I will insert the argumentation in a wider theoretical frame. To argue about the status of the second principle about classic mechanical Moulines introduces the 'guiding principle' concept. The guiding principles wouldn't be directly contrastable. The only way in which they could be contrastable would be through special laws. From my point of view natural selection, considered as the guiding principle, would explain why many thinkers had considered it a tautology and how this does not imply vacuity. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the rationality of law and legal decision making would be enhanced by a systematic attempt to recognize and respond to the implications of empirical uncertainty for policy making and decision making. Admission of uncertainty about the accuracy of facts and the validity of assumptions relied on to make inferences of fact is commonly avoided in law because it raises the spectre of paralysis of the capacity to decide issues authoritatively. The roots of this short-sighted (...) view are found in primitive mechanical models of relationships in the empirical and social world – those of objective causality and determinism. Insofar as it is believed that if we had sufficient data a clear and unequivocal answer would be available to each question, admission of uncertainty is seen as a sign of insufficiency, incompetence, impotence, and is avoided whenever a decision that must be seen to be based on valid reasons, cannot be avoided. Avoidance of some decisions, duplicity in others, is the result. -/- Decision-making must be restructured to recognize the provisional and context-bound validity and relevance of the models we use to conceptualize and order our understanding of phenomena, and to utilize this awareness as an instrument in the production of legal policies and decisions that will be authoritative precisely because they are honestly accurate and socially responsible. The paper makes a start on such a re-structuring of the legal process by exploring the implications of the observation that if law is to be “just”: 1) legal policy must be based on accurate information and rationally related to social goals; and 2) decisions applying policy to individual fact situations must be based on assumptions that are both relevant and accurate. -/- Reasons for determinations of fact must be given, otherwise the presumption that the trier of fact is “reasonable” is an unconditional licence to use private modes of logic and theories of social and natural science. What is not disclosed cannot be challenged on grounds of invalidity or irrelevance. -/- Use of “objective validity” as a standard to evaluate conclusions made by the trier of fact in contentious cases would only serve to beg all important questions by concealing: 1) fundamental normative conflict, and 2) the limited nature and applicability of many validity claims. -/- Our use of the phrases “undue risk,” “public interest,” “reasonable,” and “necessary,” reflects the weight we choose to give conflicting social values and goals when we must make decisions in relative ignorance of all the consequences. “Objective criteria” are of limited utility in legal decision-making because their social meaning is derivative. Policy generation in the absence of any coherent conceptual-normative framework, use of vague terminology in legislation stating policy, and the absence of rational means to distinguish between individual cases to which decision-makers are required by law to apply policy, make it inevitable that many legal “decisions” made in the guise of determinations of objective fact, are charades, an arbitrary, capricious, intuitive, subjective (and thus private) use of public decision-making power. -/- Law must alter its aspirations and recognize that rational decision-making is a process that can occur only within parameters set by present knowledge and societal preference structures. Only by working with the constraints imposed by these parameters is it possible to achieve “just” decisions. Where no rational basis for differentiating cases exists, “individualized justice” must be avoided and public policy articulated in law applied uniformly to all cases in a class. The terms “reasonable” and “necessary,” used to describe policy and its consequences for specific cases, must be understood to represent provisional societal assessments, attempts to implement societal preference structures in the face of limited knowledge. Heightened awareness of the limited nature of our knowledge can only result in legal policies that have a more explicit normative basis. -/- The volume is is published with an introduction by Michael D. Bayles. It is available in hardback, paperback, and as an ebook. (shrink)

"Proceedings of the 11th IVR World Congress on Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy... held on August 14-20, 1983 in Helsinki"--Introd.