This paper is divided into two parts. In the first one I distinguish between weak and strong Anti-Archimedeanisms, the latter being the view that metaethics, just as any other discipline attempting to work out a second-order conceptual, metaphysical non-committed discourse about the first-order discourse composing normative practices, is conceptually impossible or otherwise incoherent. I deal in particular with Ronald Dworkin’s famous exposition of the view. I argue that strong Anti-Archimedeanism constitutes an untenable philosophical stance, therefore making logical space for the (...) practice of a discipline such as metaethics—conceived as ethically neutral. This makes space, concurrently, for neutral conceptual jurisprudence. In the second part of the article, I attempt to show two things. On the one hand, that Dworkin’s widely discussed ‘challenge of disagreements’ to legal positivism is founded upon strong Anti-Archimedeanism. On the other hand, that having rejected strong Anti-Archimedeanism we should consequently reject the challenge as a serious challenge to positivism. This move, of course, does not thereby imply that accounting for legal disagreements is not an important jurisprudential task. But it marks—contra Dworkin—that there is no principled or a priori impossibility of doing so within a positivist framework. (shrink)

Riggs v. Palmerhas become famous since Dworkin used it to show that legal positivism is defective. The debate over the merits of Dworkin's claims is still very lively. Yet not enough attention has been paid to the fact that the content of the statute at issue inRiggswas given by thecounterfactual intentionof the legislature. According to arguments from legislative intent, a judicial decision is justified if it is based on the lawmaker's intention. But can legislative intentions be determined counterfactually? More generally, (...) what are the discursive commitments undertaken by a lawyer or a judge, in an exchange of legal reasons, when using this interpretive methodology? This paper addresses these issues considering, in particular, David Lewis's “resemblance” condition and “relevant similarity” between possible worlds in the evaluation of counterfactual statements. The analysis sheds some new light on the debate on theoretical disagreements and shows that Dworkin's conception of law as an argumentative practice is not necessarily at odds with legal positivism. It rather allows us to look at it under a better light. (shrink)