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3 - Normative Legal Positivism

from Part I - Fundamentals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 January 2021

By
Frederick Schauer
Edited by
Torben Spaak  and
Patricia Mindus
Torben Spaak
Affiliation:
Stockholms Universitet
Patricia Mindus
Affiliation:
Uppsala Universitet, Sweden
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Summary

Schauer discusses normative positivism, explaining that this type of positivism comes in two main versions, namely, in the shape of a prescription to legal actors and in the shape of a prescription to legal institutional designers. He argues that a full appreciation of the artefactual nature of law leads to the conclusion that a culture can modify its concept of law in order to make it as useful a concept as possible, and that if normative positivism is a plausible position, it follows not only that choosing a concept of law on moral grounds is a moral position but also that choosing to see the enterprise of legal theory in a normative way itself amounts to a normative position.

Keywords

concept of lawnormativitypositivismrule of recognitionlegal positivism
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Legal Positivism , pp. 61 - 78
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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