Scott J Shapiro between Positivism and Non-Positivism

Abstract

In his book Legality Scott J Shapiro presents a large-scale and sophisticated attempt to defend legal positivism in its most outspoken form, namely exclusive legal positivism. This, however, does not mean that morality plays no role in Shapiro’s analysis of the nature of law. On the contrary, he connects law with morality in myriad ways. This gives rise to the question of whether Shapiro’s theory of the nature of law is truly positivistic. In the article I argue that Shapiro’s theory is, first, in crucial respects non-positivistic, and, second, in certain other respects indeed positivistic but in need of being converted into a non-positivistic theory.