The author deals with one aspect of the justification of governmental action and its product (the law). He focuses on the authoritative character of legal rule, analyzing the apparent capacity of governments to produce reasons for action not grounded on substantive moral considerations. The assumption of that capacity seems necessary in order to establish a general moral obligation to obey a government irrespective of the actions required. This question is faced in connection with the thesis that only a particular form (...) of government, democracy, is morally justified insofar as it rests on legal rules issued by a legitimate source. (shrink)

1. La definición de "derecho" y de "norma jurídica".--2. Los conceptos básicos del derecho.--3. El concepto de sistema jurídico y la validez moral.--4. La ciencia del derecho y la interpretación jurídica.

The essays in this volume concern the topic of legal rights, how they are related to morality, the place of rights on moral theory, and the legal recognition of rights.

Many writers interested in Kelsen's concept of validity state that it is primarily related to such issues as the identity of a legal system, the membership of particular norms in a legal system, its internal consistency, and so on. The result is that for many, Kelsen's concept of validity bears no affinity to the idea of validity prevailing in traditional legal philosophy. This chapter argues that this reading of Kelsen's concept of validity is mistaken. Proponents of this reading have been (...) led to disregard important aspects of Kelsen's theory, formulating unwarranted and tortuous interpretations of it in order to show how it deals with issues that are erroneously supposed to be primarily connected to its concept of validity. It is shown that Kelsen's theory, like traditional philosophical accounts of law, equates the validity of law with its binding force and its existence, and that it conceives of the ascription of validity as a normative judgement. (shrink)