The Structure of Legal System

Abstract

In the study the legal system is conteptualized as a meaning system which contains the text layer, the layer of the legal dogmatics, the layer of judicial precedents and in some modern legal system the layer of the constitutional tights is added to these. The study outlines the connections among these layers of law comparing the continental legal systems rooted in the Roman law to the common law systems. With this concept of law the study analyses the history of legal theory and makes a typology of the tightening concepts of law which emphasize only one layer of the law. For example, for the French ecole de l'exégèse in the 19. century the law was only the text, for the German Bergiffsjurisprudenz the law was the layer of the legal doctrines, or for the legal realists the law was the judge made law; and newly for Ronald Dworkin and his followers the law is identified as the layer of the constitutional rights first of all.