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19 - The Scope of Legal Positivism: Validity or Interpretation?

from Part IV - Main Tenets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 January 2021

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

Spaak argues that legal positivists need to consider the social thesis in light of an important distinction between two levels of legal thinking, namely, the level of the sources of law (existence) and the level of the interpretation and application of law (content), and that they have good reason to restrict the scope of the social thesis to the level of the sources of law. He argues that by restricting the scope of the social thesis in this way, inclusive legal positivists can avoid having to assume that moral judgements can be true in a non-relative way, that exclusive legal positivists can avoid having to say that judges are creating new law instead of applying pre-existing law, if and insofar as they invoke normative considerations in their interpretation and application of the law, and that both inclusive and exclusive legal positivists can avoid Dworkin’s theoretical disagreement objection.

Keywords

validityinterpretationlegal thinkingsocial thesisseparation of powers
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Legal Positivism , pp. 443 - 464
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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