Epistemology and Validity in Law

摘要

The contemporary reflection on the problem of the validity of juridical norms conducts to a radical questioning of the frontier drawn by the positivist theories of law between an approach which intends to be merely descriptive and a process that tends to integrate the axiological dimension into the study of normative systems. Recent developments in both deontic logic (Bulygin, 1982) and the analysis of juridical reasoning (A. Aarnio, R. Alexy and A. Peczenik, 1981) reveal clearly the necessity to question the principle of axiological neutrality which underlies the positivist explanations of the validity in law. Our reflection tries to bring out the aporetic structure which the thesis of the principal positivist theoreticians offers with regard to the question of the validity of norms.