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Sources of Law

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Abstract

The question whether a particular rule is also a legal rule can have a large practical importance because the answer may determine whether the rule will be enforced by state organs. Lawyers have developed a number of standards to determine whether a rule has the status of law, and these standards are known as the sources of law. In this chapter, we will take a closer look at these sources of law. More particularly, we will address the following questions: what is a source of law (Sects. 2.1 and 2.2), and which sources of law are recognized (Sects. 2.3–2.7)?

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Recommended Literature

  • Hart HLA (2012) The concept of law, 3rd edn. Oxford University Press, Oxford

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  • Raz J (2009) Legal positivism and the sources of law. In: Raz J (ed) The authority of law. Essays on law and morality, 2nd edn. Clarendon, Oxford, pp 37–52

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Correspondence to Jaap Hage .

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© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Hage, J. (2014). Sources of Law. In: Hage, J., Akkermans, B. (eds) Introduction to Law. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06910-4_2

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