Immanuel Kant warned against confusing the question of what law is (quid jus) and what the law is in a given jurisdiction (quid juris). This paper tries to revive this long-forgotten admonition. Some jurisprudes seem to presuppose that lawyers and officials are in the business of investigating what law is, which leads to regrettable confusions. Moreover, the philosophical concept of law (quid jus) has no relevance for law-ascertainment practices (quid juris), even though quid juris ascertainments are part of the practice legal philosophers philosophize about. Legal disagreements are of various kinds, but none of their solutions involve any kind of recourse to philosophical claims about the nature of law. This, in turns, raises the question: if legal philosophy (insofar as it purports to be about the nature or the concept of law) is irrelevant to law-ascertainment practices, what is it good for?

This paper examines the relation between an inconsistent normative system and normative conflicts so as to determine whether the former is a necessary and/or a sufficient condition for the latter or, stated otherwise, whether a perfectly consistent normative system could guarantee the absence of normative conflicts and dilemmas. The traditional thesis that moral conflicts arise from inconsistencies or formal flaws within a normative system has been already challenged by some philosophers. Specifically, for Ruth B. Marcus, conflicts and dilemmas may arise even within the frame of a logically consistent system. Here, I analyse the connections between consistency and the phenomenon of normative conflicts, paying special attention to Marcus’s main arguments for the conclusion that normative conflicts may arise not only as a necessary consequence of an inconsistent system but also within the frame of a consistent one. In so doing, however, I show that it does not happen for the exact reasons she offers.

In his book Advanced Introduction to Legal Positivism, Kaarlo Tuori focuses on the legal philosophies of two of the perhaps most important legal theorists of the 20th century, Hans Kelsen and H.L. A. Hart. Although Tuori’s work is highly critical, he seems to share some fundamental theses accepted by his targets: (1) The Normativity Thesis, (2) The Social Thesis, and (3) The Separability thesis. What, then, are Tuori’s complaints against the Kelsenian and Hartian versions of positivism? He argues that the positivist description of law is inadequate, not because of what it includes, but because of what it leaves out. It describes law as a self-contained, autonomous, and united system, leaving out law’s relations to politics, questions of legal interpretation and argumentation, issues related to constitutional morality, and most of the questions related to rationality. I agree that Kelsen’s and Hart’s positivisms have very little to contribute to discussions on the most important issues of the criticism of law. Nevertheless, they have something to offer. Although they were not successful in their attempts to solve the problem of legal normativity, they made a very important contribution by pointing out that there is a genuine problem.

Deontic logic is the logic of what ought to be done, or what ought to be the case. In this paper, I attempt to bring deontic logic closer to the interests of theoretically interested lawyers. To that end, I use examples of deontic reasoning that, although simplified for expository purposes, resemble real legal arguments. Moreover, I refrain from formalisation. It is possible to distinguish three ‘steps’ of deontic reasoning, and these three steps structure the argument of this paper. The first step is from non-deontic facts to the duties (or obligations) an agent has. The second step is from duties to what an agent (legally) ought to do. And the third step is from what an agent ought to do to whether an act performed by the agent was lawful or not. Deontic logic is a broad subject, and I had to be selective in the topics that are addressed. The selected topics are the structure of ought-to-do facts (section 2); norms, duties, obligations and what an agent ought to do (section 3); reasoning with norms (section 4); deontic inheritance (section 5); and three kinds of permission (section 6). The conclusion of the paper lists differences between other treatments of deontic logic and the present approach.

El artículo responde a las críticas formuladas en Revus por Jaap Hage y Pascal Felix Meier a la propuesta desarrollada previamente en Normas como funciones. Su objetivo principal es aclarar el alcance de la tesis según la cual las normas —en particular las prescripciones y las proscripciones— pueden representarse como funciones que asignan valores de corrección a acciones y omisiones. Tras situar la propuesta en el contexto de la teoría de la norma, el trabajo explica la estructura funcional de las normas, precisando el dominio y el codominio de las funciones normativas y distinguiéndolas de otros tipos de relaciones analizadas en la lógica jurídica. Asimismo, examina las diferencias entre este modelo y otros enfoques funcionales, como la concepción de las normas como correlaciones entre casos y soluciones o las lógicas input/output. Finalmente, se introducen y se aclaran los principios de racionalidad normativa que permiten comprender las normas como guías de conducta. El artículo sostiene que concebir las normas como funciones de orden superior permite representar de manera unificada la asignación normativa de corrección e incorrección a las acciones, evitando ciertos problemas lógico-semánticos de la teoría de la norma y ofreciendo un marco conceptual flexible para el análisis del fenómeno normativo.

This paper offers a phenomenologically informed commentary on Kaarlo Tuori’s recent book, Advanced Introduction to Legal Positivism. On the one hand, it provides support for Tuori’s critical engagement with a phenomenology of legal ordering. On the other hand, it brings conceptual and normative resources of phenomenology to bear on Tuori’s recent work, exposing some of its shortcomings and missed opportunities for drawing on a phenomenology of legal order to strengthen his model of modern state law.

In contemporary scholarship, most proposals that refer to the moral foundations of contract law can be categorized under one of two broad conceptual categories: deontological (such as will, autonomy-based, and transference theories) and consequentialist (such as those rooted in efficiency and distributive justice considerations) theories. However, these conceptions are insufficient for adequately explaining and justifying contract rules because they either fail to grasp relevant features of the practice of contemporary voluntary transactions or they lose sight of the core content of this area of law. This paper aims to provide theoretical insights to mend such shortcomings by redirecting the theorization of contracts towards an egalitarian liberal account of its social functions.

En el presente ensayo se analizan tres “intenciones” que operan en las teorías de la interpretación textual: la intentio auctoris (intención del autor), la intentio lectoris (intención del lector) y la intentio operis (intención de la obra). Posteriormente, se trasladan estas categorías al análisis de la interpretación jurídica. En particular, se discute la noción de “intención del legislador (constituyente)”. La tesis central es que, si bien las posturas formalistas y escépticas radicales perviven aún en el debate, una vía más fructífera se encuentra en una teoría moderadamente realista orientada a la intentio operis. Desde esta perspectiva, el texto (de la constitución) impone restricciones interpretativas a través de una comunidad de intérpretes, lo cual permite afirmar la posibilidad del error interpretativo –bajo criterios públicos de corrección– sin caer en una concepción subjetivista.