Some legal philosophers regard the use of deontic language to describe the law as philosophically significant. Joseph Raz argues that it gives rise to ‘the problem of normativity of law’. He develops an account of what he calls ‘detached’ legal statements to resolve the problem. Unfortunately, Raz’s account is difficult to reconcile with the orthodox semantics of deontic language. The article offers a revised account of the distinction between committed and detached legal statements. It argues that deontic statements carry a (...) Gricean generalized conversational implicature to the effect that the rules in question reflect the speaker’s own commitments. Detached legal statements are made when this implicature is either explicitly cancelled or when the conversational context is sufficient to defeat the implicature. I conclude by offering some tentative reflections on the theoretical significance of deontic language in the law. (shrink)

We explain three phenomena in legal discourse in terms of MacFarlane’s assessment-sensitive semantics: incompatible applications of law, assessments of statements about what is legally the case, and retrospective overruling. The claim is that assessment sensitivity fits in with the view, shared by many legal theorists at least with respect to hard cases, that the final adjudicator’s interpretation of legal sources is constitutive of the applied norm. We argue that there are strong analogies between certain kinds of statements in legal discourse (...) as understood in light of that view and discourse about matters of taste and future contingents. Thus, if assessment-sensitive semantics provides a compelling account of discourse about matters of taste and future contingents, then it likewise provides a compelling account of those statements in legal discourse. (shrink)

Algunas versiones del realismo jurídico pretenden compatibilizar la pretensión de que el derecho es un conjunto de normas con un fuerte compromiso con el empirismo. De conformidad con este último, el derecho no está constituido por entidades abstractas de ningún tipo sino por hechos empíricamente constatables. En vistas a llevar a cabo esta compatibilización, en varios trabajos Riccardo Guastini ha defendido una concepción de las proposiciones normativas, i.e. aserciones existenciales sobre normas jurídicas, como enunciados teóricos acerca del derecho vigente, necesariamente (...) referentes a ciertos hechos. Se concibe así al derecho vigente como el conjunto de textos que son resultado de interpretaciones estables, consolidadas y dominantes que los jueces han llevado a cabo en sus decisiones en el ordenamiento de que se trate. Partiendo de esta versión del realismo jurídico, este trabajo procura sembrar algunas dudas. Primero, sobre este modo de concebir a las proposiciones normativas. Segundo, sobre el modo en que, en consecuencia, queda configurada la teoría del derecho. Tercero, y más en general, sobre la pretensión de compatibilizar la visión del derecho como conjunto de normas con la tesis empirista. (shrink)