23 - The Semantic Thesis in Legal Positivism

Summary

Green considers a strong version of the semantic thesis, according to which legal statements are descriptive statements solely about social facts. He starts from the foundational thesis of positivism, the social thesis, which has it that the existence and content of the law are ultimately based solely in social facts about a community. But he notes that there are two versions of this thesis. Under the reduction version, a legal system and its laws consist of social facts. Under the assignment version, they are not social entities at all; they are norms, understood as abstract objects. But the grounds for assigning these abstract objects to a community are ultimately solely social facts. Focusing on the assignment version, he asks whether the semantic thesis follows from the social thesis, and, if that answer is no, the extent to which legal statements actually conform to the semantic thesis. He argues that assignment positivists can conclude that the answer is negative because, for them, legal statements describe abstract objects. For Green, this simple account of the semantics of legal statements is superior to expressivist accounts and to Raz’s account.