Abstract
Chapter 8 concludes summing up what the neo-institutionalist approach defended would imply as for the relationship between law and morality. Here different approaches are reviewed and discussed. The outcome is a partial endorsement of a discourse theory approach. Institutionalism, old and new, to make sense of the ideal side of law, of its dual nature, cannot maintain morality outside the precinct of legal practice. In this sense, institutionalism – to be faithful to its own notion of institution – cannot keep faith to legal positivism. Institutionalism needs – this might be a conclusion – morality and a theory of morality to render justice to the concept of law we adopt from the internal point of view. But the morality theory searched for cannot be a Platonist one, distant from practice, and imposed upon it, or even one that could believe to derive practice from one or a few basic principles in a logicist mood.
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Notes
- 1.
Cf. Helmut Plessner’s introduction to Das Fischer Lexikon – Philosophie, ed. by A. Diemer and I. Frenzel, Frankfurt am Main 1965, p. 10.
- 2.
See Th. Nagel, The View From Nowhere, Oxford 1987.
- 3.
Cf. above Chapter 6.1, pp. 169–171.
- 4.
See M. Schlick, Fragen der Ethik, Frankfurt am Main 1984.
- 5.
C. S. Nino, Derecho, moral y política, Barcelona 1995, pp. 46–47.
- 6.
H. Arendt, On Violence, in Id., Crises of the Republic, Harmondsworth 1972, p. 139.
- 7.
M. Aub, Campo francés, Madrid 1998, p. 14.
- 8.
R. Dreier, Recht-Staat-Vernunft. Studien zur Rechtstheorie 2, Frankfurt am Main 1992, pp. 12–13.
- 9.
It refers to the “detached normative statements” of Joseph Raz. Cf. J. Raz, The Concept of Legal System. An Introduction to the Theory of Legal System, 2nd ed., Oxford 1980, pp. 236ff.
- 10.
Cf. N. MacCormick, Legal Theory and Legal Reasoning, revised ed., Oxford 2003, pp. 275ff.
- 11.
For this somewhat antiquated terminology see, R. De Stefano, Il problema del diritto non naturale, Milano 1955.
- 12.
See above, Chapter 4.4, p. 117.
- 13.
N. Bobbio, Essere e dover essere nella scienza giuridica, in Rivista internazionale di filosofia del diritto, vol. 58, 1967, p. 250.
- 14.
Cf. In this connection my own book La “lotta contro il diritto soggettivo”. Karl Larenz e la dottrina nazionalsocialista, Milano 1988.
- 15.
H. G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik, in Gesammelte Werke, ed. by H. G. Gadamer, vol. 1, Tübingen 1986, p. 281.
- 16.
J. Ritter, Institution “ethisch”. Bemerkungen zur philosophischen Theorie des Handelns, in Zur Theorie der Institution, ed. by H. Schelsky, 2nd ed., Düsseldorf 1970, p. 64.
- 17.
J. Habermas, Vorlesungen zu einer sprachtheoretischen Grundlegung der Soziologie, in Id., Vorstudien und Ergänzungen zur theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, Frankfurt am Main 1984, pp. 70–71. English translation mine.
- 18.
See also above, Chapter 3.
- 19.
An attempt to sustain the imperativist theory recognising the “objective” nature of law is that of Karl Olivecrona with his concept of legal norms as “independent imperatives”: see K. Olivecrona, Law as Fact, 1st ed., Copenhagen 1939. For a criticism, cf. N. Bobbio, Teoria della norma, Torino 1958, pp. 134ff.
- 20.
G. Radbruch, Gesetzliches Unrecht und übergesetzliches Recht, in Id., Rechtsphilosophie, 8th ed., Stuttgart 1973, p. 345. See also G. Radbruch, Fünf Minuten Rechtsphilosophie, in Id., Rechtsphilosophie, 8th ed., p. 328: “Es kann Gesetze mit einem solchen Maße von Ungerechtigkeit und Gemeinschädlichkeit geben, das ihnen die Geltung, ja der Rechtscharacter abgesprochen werden muß”. Cf. W. Ott, Die Radbruchsche Formel. Pro und Contra, in Zeitschrift für Schweizerisches Recht, 1988, pp. 335–347. Cf. also H. Dreier, Die Radbruchsche Formel – Erkenntnis oder Bekenntnis? in Staatsrecht in Theorie und Praxis. Festschrift für Robert Walter, ed. by H. Mayer et al., Wien 1991, pp. 117–135.
- 21.
M. Kriele, Recht und praktische Vernunft, Göttingen 1979, p. 117.
- 22.
C. S. Nino, Derecho, moral y política. Una revisión della teoría general del derecho, Barcelona 1985, p. 67.
- 23.
See A. Peczenik, On Law and Reason, Dordrecht 1989, pp. 243ff. Cf. also A. Peczenik, Dimensiones morales del Derecho, in Doxa, n. 8, 1990, p. 100.
- 24.
See J. Habermas, Faktizität und Geltung, Frankfurt am Main 1992.
- 25.
See Lord Devlin, The Enforcement of Morals, Oxford 1965.
- 26.
This was also the opinion of a brilliant Italian philosopher of law, Giovanni Tarello, whose realist theory, lacking the holistic assumption that lies at the base of the Dworkian conception, led him to a radical normative scepticism. According to this the meaning of a legal norm is only that attributed to it by the one who interprets it with an act of will that is not justifiable in a prior manner. See G. Tarello, Diritto, enunciati, usi, Bologna 1974.
- 27.
See R. Dworkin, Law’s Empire, Fontana, London 1986.
- 28.
R. Alexy, On Necessary Relations Between Law and Morality, in Ratio Juris, 1989, p. 177. See also R. Alexy, Begriff und Geltung des Rechts, pp. 64ff.
- 29.
R. Alexy, On Necessary Relations Between Law and Morality, p. 179.
- 30.
Ibid., p. 180.
- 31.
Ibid.
- 32.
Ibid. Cf. R. Dreier, Zur gegenwärtigen Diskussion des Verhältnisses von Recht und Moral in der Bundesrepublik, in Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie, Beiheft 44, 1991, pp. 55–67.
- 33.
E. Tugendhat, Fragen der Ethik, Stuttgart 1984, p. 73.
- 34.
See for example L. Fuller, Positivism and Fidelity to Law: A Reply to Professor Hart, in Harvard Law Review, 1958, pp. 630ff.
- 35.
Cf. K. Günther, Das Prinzip von Angemessenheit, Frankfurt am Main 1988.
- 36.
See H. Kelsen, Reine Recthslehre, 2nd ed., Wien 1960.
- 37.
See H. Kelsen, Reine Rechtslehre, Wien 1934, pp. 62ff.
- 38.
See H. Kelsen, Theorie der Normen, ed. by K. Ringhofer and R. Walter, Wien 1978.
- 39.
One thinks of the radical antivolontarism of the Hauptprobleme der Staatsrechtslehre (Wien 1911), his first “dogmatic” monograph, in which the legal norm is reconceptualized as “hypothetical judgment” and not as an imperative or as a command or any other manifestation of will.
- 40.
Cf. for example J. Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, Oxford 1980.
- 41.
See H. L. A. Hart, Essays in Jurisprudence and Philosophy, Oxford 1983, pp. 21ff.
- 42.
On this point cf. C. Nino, Derecho, moral y política, p. 33.
- 43.
For a similar position, see N. Hoerster, Zur Verteidigung der rechtspositivistischen Trennungsthese, in Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie, Beiheft 37, 1990, pp. 27–32.
- 44.
See Th. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. by C. B. Macpherson, Harmondsworth 1982, pp. 120–121.
- 45.
G. Jellinek, Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 1, ed. by W. Jellinek, Berlin 1911, p. 175.
- 46.
See R. Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously, 2nd ed., London 1978.
- 47.
For the difference between “constitutive” and “regulative” rules, see supra, pp. 146–147.
- 48.
J. Raz, Practical Reason and Norms, 2nd ed., Oxford 1992, p. 164.
- 49.
Cf. C. S. Nino, Derecho, moral y política, Chapter 1.
- 50.
J. Raz, Practical Reason and Norms, p. 165.
- 51.
Ibid., p. 167.
- 52.
See G. Jellinek, Die sozialethische Bedeutung von Recht, Unrecht und Strafe, reprint of the 1st ed. (Vienna 1878), Hildesheim 1967, p. 42.
- 53.
See H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law, Oxford 1961, p. 195.
- 54.
See C. S. Nino, Derecho, moral y política, p. 60.
- 55.
N. MacCormick, Natural Law Reconsidered, in Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 1981, p. 109.
- 56.
Cf. C. S. Nino, Derecho, moral y política, Chapter 3.
- 57.
This seems to be the opinion of Carlos Nino for whom the difference between “constative and prescriptive judgments” is thus descriptive and “pure normative judgments” are not an intermediate or spurious or weak form of moral judgment. In contradiction with his conception of “pure normative judgment” as a judgment whose content is independent of the consequences of its execution, Nino includes prudential judgments in “pure” normative judgments (see C. S. Nino, Derecho, moral y política, pp. 118–119). The category of “supportive normative judgments” introduced by Nino alongside that of “pure normative judgments” consists in reality of a category in itself with respect to “pure normative judgments”, since such supportive judgments are nothing other than conclusions derived logically – with the use of a factual premise represented by “prescriptive constantive judgments” – from pure normative judgments and can thus be classified as applied “pure normative judgments”.
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La Torre, M. (2010). Law and Morality. In: Law as Institution. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 90. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6607-8_8
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