Two opposing conceptions

pp. 3-23

in: Massimo Torre, Massimo La Torre, Law as institution, Berlin, Springer, 2010

Abstract

In the first chapter a discussion is started about the relationship between law and power, seen as a presupposition for an assessment of the nature of law. As a matter of fact, as has been remarked, general theories of law struggle to do justice to the multiple dualities of the law. Indeed, law has a "dual nature": it is a fact, but it also a norm, a sort of ideal entity. Law is sanction, but it is also discourse. It is effectivitity, or facticity, but it is also a vehicle of principles among which the central one is justice. But this duality is not only a phenomenological, or a matter of justification and implementation as two separate moments. It is an ontological quality too, and it is there from the beginning, from the moment where law 'springs' as a distinct experience and practice. Here we are then confronted with the question of power.