Redondo on the normativity of law

Abstract

In her latest book, Positivismo jurídico “interno”, Cristina Redondo defends a novel account of the normativity of law. According to Redondo, the law does not claim legal rules to be substantive reasons to act as they require. Rather, she argues, law only intends legal rules to be recognized as logically non-defeasible rules to be used as premises in formal arguments whenever they apply. Thus, the law claims legal rules to be reasons only in a linguistic-formal sense, independently of their impact on what people ought to do. Here, I shall argue that Redondo's arguments against the view that law intends legal rules to be substantive reasons (or to be treated as such) are misguided, and that her own positive proposal according to which law claims legal rules to be reasons in a merely formal sense ought to be rejected.