Abstract
The challenge of constitutionalization arises, first of all, from the positivization of moral principles in law, elaborated by an Enlightened rational jusnaturalism. From its inception, according to some ethical perspectives, a crisis of the artificial character of the law occurs with a concomitant dissolution of the Kelsenian legal science of positive law, whose formal paradigm is rigidly centered on procedures of authorization and competence. To this outmoded Kelsenian model are opposed theories of moral justification that invoke forms of foundational rationality and, thereby, shift the focus and emphasis from dynamic-voluntarist to static elements. It is believed that the Constitution has filled up the ‘legal space’, redrawing within the boundaries of the law the classic dialectical tension of natural law/positive law, and circumscribing, through the requirement of justification, the previously irreducible Kelsenian space of interpretative discretion. However, is constitutionalization the irreversible crisis of legal positivism and the abandonment of the methodological disenchantment of Kelsen legal science? In this chapter, the predominant conception of constitutionalization is placed into question by analyzing different strategies for the composition of legal agreements, and reemphasizing the indispensability of some central aspects of the Kelsenian tradition. The attempts to refound forms of moral objectivity, situated between procedural strategies and comprehensive ethics, contain the underlying risk of a moralization of law: a risk which can only reinforce the disorientation of contemporary jurisprudence through its preceding rejection of a disenchanted and sober reaffirmation of the rationale of legal positivism. Only the latter is able to understand the tension between law and the multiplicity of ethical viewpoints existing in our fragmented, contemporary societies, without claiming to lead them back to a universal moral point of view with a transcendental foundation.
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Notes
- 1.
See Kelsen 1928a, for the initial formulation of this position.
- 2.
As Kelsen states in the Reine Rechtslehre of 1934, “[t]he Pure Theory of Law is a theory of positive law, of positive law as such, and not of any special system of law. It is general legal theory, not an interpretation of particular national or international legal norms. As theory, the Pure Theory of Law aims solely at cognition of its subject-matter, its object. It attempts to answer the questions of what law is and how the law is made, not the questions of what the law ought to be or how the law ought to be made. The Pure Theory of Law is legal science, not legal policy. It characterizes itself as a ‘pure’ theory because it aims at cognition focused on the law alone, and because it aims to eliminate from this cognition everything not belonging to the object of cognition, precisely specified as law. That is, the Pure Theory aims to free legal science of all foreign elements” (Kelsen 2002, 6) [“La dottrina pura del diritto è una teoria del diritto positivo. Del diritto positivo semplicemente, non di un particolare ordinamento giuridico. E’ teoria generale del diritto, non interpretazione di norme giuridiche particolari, statali o internazionali. Essa, come teoria, vuol conoscere esclusivamente il suo oggetto. Essa cerca di rispondere alla domanda: che cosa e come è il diritto, non però alla domanda: come esso deve essere o deve essere costituito. Essa è scienza del diritto, non già politica del diritto. Se viene indicata come dottrina pura del diritto, ciò accade perché vorrebbe assicurare una conoscenza rivolta soltanto al diritto, e perché vorrebbe eliminare da tale conoscenza tutto ciò che non appartiene al suo oggetto esattamente determinato come diritto. Essa vuole liberare cioè la scienza del diritto da tutti gli elementi che le sono estranei” (Kelsen 1952/67, 47).
- 3.
According to Kelsen, ‘validity’ coincides with Weberian ‘ideal validity’. Of course, the distinctions between the two authors are many. For a critical reading, see Bryan et al. 2015.
- 4.
“The whole contrast between natural and positive law may, in a certain sense, be presented as a contrast between a static and a dynamic system of norms. To the extent that natural law theory ceases to develop its natural order according to a static principle and substitutes a dynamic one, that is, as it is impelled to introduce the principle of delegation because it has to realize itself in application to actual human conditions, it imperceptibly changes into positive law” (Kelsen 1928a, 407) [L’intera contrapposizione fra diritto naturale e diritto positivo può essere prospettata, in un certo senso, come la contrapposizione fra un sistema statico e un sistema dinamico di norme. Nella misura in cui la teoria giusnaturalistica cessa di sviluppare il suo ordinamento naturale in conformità ad un principio statico, e ve ne sostituisce uno dinamico, cioè nella misura in cui è costretta ad introdurre il principio di delegazione, perché deve realizzarsi applicandosi alle effettive condizioni umane, essa muta impercettibilmente in un diritto positivo”.],
- 5.
“In this respect law is like King Midas: just as everything he touched turned to gold, so everything to which the law refers assumes a legal character. Within the legal order, nullity is only the highest degree of annullability” (Kelsen 1960, 309–310) [“A questo riguardo il diritto è come re Mida: come tutto ciò che questi toccava si tramutava in oro, così tutto ciò cui il diritto si riferisce assume carattere giuridico. Nell’ordinamento, la nullità è soltanto il massimo grado di annullabilità”]. According to Kelsen, it would be not correct to require the annulment of an act created by an individual who in no way is invested with public authority; and, at the same time, it would not be possible to consider as non-existent each act produced in breach of the competence principle (Kelsen 1928b, 163–164).
- 6.
The original theoretical manifesto of the theories of legal reasoning is assumed to be that of Aarnio et al. 1981.
- 7.
In Alexy’s re-elaboration, the principle of universalization of moral judgments, as elaborated by Hare, together with the Habermasian universal pragmatics, in which the pragmatic transcendental foundation becomes that of a procedural requirement for the discursive formation of the political will through the democratic process assumes the status of a hypothetical negative criterion for normative statements (Alexy 1978, Italian Edition, 154.). This strategy of effectively undermining the Habermasian rationalist foundation, by the consideration of the mere counterfactual character of the ideal linguistic, also overcomes the utopian feature of such a project and allows us to circumnavigate the risk of a sacralisation of the democratic process implicit in the abstraction of the particularism produced by moral argumentation. However, that strategy seems to call into play, by recovering the logical foundation of a universal ethics, typically a combination of utilitarian prescriptivism, particularistic and subjective elements (Hare 1981, 1997), risking to undermine the generalizing Kantian element in the various forms of the legal justification. On these aspects and, more generally, on the risks related to variations of the principle of universalization in the procedural strategies, see Giordano 2012.
- 8.
In the sense accorded to it by the analyses of Schmitt 1960.
- 9.
“A book of jurisprudence can have but one or the other of two objects:
1. To ascertain what the law is: 2. To ascertain what it ought to be. In the former case, it may be styled a book of expository jurisprudence; in the latter, a book of censorial jurisprudence: or, in the other words, a book on the art of legislation” (Bentham 1988, 324).
- 10.
In this view, defeasibility of practical reasoning seems to resort to evaluative concepts, inevitably based on a thesis of ultimate irreducible relevance. For a particularistic reading, see Dancy 1999, Celano 2006. Concerning the limits of a stabilized decision of moral reasoning, derived from the implication of ethical concepts, see Naughton and Rawling 2000; McDowell 1998; Crisp 2000. Concerning the incommensurability of moral reasons, see Shafer-Landau 1997. Concerning the derivation of particularism from an analytical, epistemological and methodological viewpoint, see Sinnott-Armstrong 1999. For a deeper understanding of defeasibility, in the direction of epistemic contextualism, see Lance and Little 2004; on defeasible conditionals, see the foundational analyses of Alchourrón 1996, Moreso 2002. Concerning the conceptual opposition between universalism and particularism, as ideal models of practical reasoning, see Redondo 2005, 448. On the exclusionary nature of legal reasons, see Raz 1990.
- 11.
See, Catania 2008, 22.
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Giordano, V. (2017). Constitutionalism and Value-Free Method: Kelsen’s Legacy in Contemporary Challenges. In: Langford, P., Bryan, I., McGarry, J. (eds) Kelsenian Legal Science and the Nature of Law. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 118. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51817-6_6
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