Revitalizing Legal Positivism: The Shari'a and the Contemporary Relevance of the Separation Thesis

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Z. Tamanaha
Keyword(s):  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Separation Thesis

Transnational Law and Legal Positivism

2021 ◽  
pp. 970-986
Author(s):  
Michael Giudice ◽  
Eric Scarffe
Keyword(s):  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Original Form ◽  
State Law ◽  
Transnational Law ◽  
Social Fact ◽  
Separation Thesis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Philosophical Account ◽  
Theory Of Law ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

This chapter assesses the theoretical adequacy of legal positivism in explanation of several forms and features of transnational law. We suggest that while legal positivism emerged as a philosophical account of state law in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, its connection to state law is best viewed as historical and contingent rather than conceptual and necessary. Among the two core commitments of legal positivism, while the separation thesis requires no modification from its original form, the social fact thesis must be revised and developed to explain the character of transnational law. We also show how the exercise of revising a philosophical theory of law such as legal positivism provides an opportunity to illustrate the continuity between conceptual, empirical, and evaluative studies of transnational law.

Legal positivism, inclusive versus exclusive

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilfrid Waluchow
Keyword(s):  
Moral Worth ◽  
Social Institution ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Legal Validity ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Social Fact ◽  
Separation Thesis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Shared Commitment ◽  
Open Question

Modern legal positivism views law as a human creation; the existence and content of law are, fundamentally, matters of social fact. This is usually termed ‘the social thesis’. A second thesis integral to the positivist tradition is John Austin’s famous ‘separation thesis’: ‘the existence of law is one thing, its merit or demerit another…’ – there is nothing in the nature of law as a social institution that guarantees its moral worth. Despite a shared commitment to the social and separation theses, defenders of legal positivism differ significantly in their understanding of these fundamental tenets. In response to Ronald Dworkin’s claim that moral principles partly determine the content of legal systems, positivists have divided into two major camps. Inclusive positivists assert that it is conceptually possible, but not necessary, that the legal validity of a norm should depend on its consistency with moral principles or values. Exclusive positivists assert the opposite: the legal validity of a norm can never be a function of its consistency with moral principles or values. Recent debates among positivists have focused on whether inclusive positivism is consistent with the law’s claim to authority and with the role it purports to play in guiding our conduct. Where these debates will lead is, at this stage, an open question.

The Acceptance of a Legal System

1990 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-106
Author(s):  
Roger A. Shiner
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Separation Thesis ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
The Right ◽  
Independent Account

The interest of political theory in the acceptance of law is obvious. If one believes that a regime is legitimate only if it governs with the consent of the governed, then the notion of acceptance is deeply linked with the notion of legitimacy, a fundamental concern of political theory. The interest of legal theory in the notion of acceptance is less obvious. I construe it to arise in the following way. One central tradition in legal theory is that of positivistic or content-independent theories of law. Positivism, crudely speaking, is characterized by some form of the Separation Thesis—that the existence of law is one thing and its merit or demerit another. But if it is important for positivistic legal theory to mark the separation of law and the merits of law, then it must also be important to mark the separation between law and the acceptance of law. The existence of law must be one thing and its acceptance as meritorious another. In deference to the separation of existence and merit, positivism tries to find a content-independent account of the validity of law. Equally, in deference to the separation of law and acceptance, positivism tries to find a content-independent account of the acceptance of law. The topic of this paper is whether the separation of law and the acceptance of law is possible. I shall try to suggest, in service of a non-positivistic or content-dependent approach to law, that this separation is not possible. I will attempt to argue on the basis of points which legal positivism itself has acknowledged to form valid constraints on any theory of acceptance. My ambitious thesis is that positivism has presented us with the reasons for rejecting it. Even if that thesis is not made out, I have a less ambitious thesis which I am confident of securing, that the demand for an account of law which permits law to be accepted ‘for any reason whatever’ is not a theoryneutral demand which might decide between positivism and natural law theory. Rather, it is an expression of a prior commitment to positivism. It is the familiar demand of natural law theory that the convergence of attitudes towards law which makes for acceptance of law must be a convergence for the right kind of reasons; ones that have to do with the value of law.

The Separation Thesis and the Limits of Interpretation

1999 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrei Marmor
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Legal Reasoning ◽  
Close Relation ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
The Other ◽  
Legal Validity ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Separation Thesis ◽  
The Law

There are many versions of legal positivism; perhaps as many as there are legal positivists around. All the versions of legal positivism, however, subscribe to the so-called Separation Thesis. This thesis basically maintains that detenriining what the law is, does not necessarily, or conceptually, depend on moral or other evaluative considerations about what it ought to be in the relevant circumstances. Legal positivists differ, however, and quite substantially, over the appropriate interpretation of this thesis. The so-called ‘strong’, or ‘exclusive’ version of legal positivism maintains that moral considerations never determine the legal validity of norms. ‘Soft’ positivists, on the other hand, do maintain that there is a close relation between legal validity and morality, but they hold that this relation is, at best, a contingent matter; it does not derive from the nature of law or legal reasoning as such. Soft-positivists claim that moral considerations determine legal validity only in certain cases, namely, in those cases which follow from the rules of recognition that happen to prevail in a given legal system.

Existence and Justification Conditions of Law

2003 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Giudice
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Difficult Problem ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Moral Rights ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Ronald Dworkin ◽  
Political Morality ◽  
Moral Standards ◽  
Separation Thesis ◽  
Necessary Truth

Legal systems such as those in the United States and Canada, which include fundamental moral rights or provisions in their constitutions, present an interesting and difficult problem for legal positivists. Are such moral standards to count among the existence or validity conditions of laws in those systems, or are they better understood as fundamental objectives or justification conditions which laws may or may not achieve or respect in practice? The first option, known as inclusive legal positivism, expands the traditional positivist separation thesis to mean that although there is no necessary connection between law and morality in general, it is possible that in some systems it is a necessary truth that laws reproduce or satisfy certain demands of morality. The second option, known as exclusive legal positivism, denies this possibility, and maintains instead that it is never a necessary condition that laws reproduce or satisfy certain demands of morality, even if such demands are constitutionally recognized. On the exclusive account, in the context of constitutional states such as the U.S. and Canada, the separation thesis is expanded to mean that there is no necessary connection between the existence and content of laws and the demands of political morality typically included in constitutions. In this paper I defend exclusive positivism and argue that it best follows from traditional positivist commitments and avoids what I take to be a critical problem with inclusive positivism. Further, I argue that the concepts, distinctions, and arguments deployed in the internal positivist debate are also of value in the wider debate between H.L.A. Hart and Ronald Dworkin.

Riccardo Saccenti, Debating Medieval Natural Law: A Survey. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016, XIII, pp. 155.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 318-320
Author(s):  
Scott L. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Great Chain Of Being ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Concepts ◽  
Hans Kelsen ◽  
University Of Notre Dame ◽  
Conceptual Shift

Saccenti’s volume belongs to the category of Begriffsgeschichte, the history of concepts, and more particularly to the debate over the existence or nonexistence of a conceptual shift in ius naturale to encompass a subjective notion of natural rights. The author argues that this issue became particularly relevant in mid-twentieth century, first, because of the desire to delimit the totalitarian implications of legal positivism chez Hans Kelsen; second, in response to Lovejoy’s The Great Chain of Being and its progeny; and third, as a result of a revival of neo-Thomistic and neo-scholastic perspectives sometimes labelled “une nouvelle chrétienté.”

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