Special Workshop Abstract

The aim of legal knowledge is to identify the duties and rights of citizens according to the law. In this sense, legal knowledge is obtained from statements like ‘Legally, all F have the obligation to pay tax T’ or ‘Legally, x has the right to recover damages D’. These statements express norm propositions. Norm propositions are the meaning of normative statements, like chemical propositions are the meaning of chemical statements, or historical propositions are the meaning of historical statements. Normative statements have a descriptive nature; they are statements about the existence of norms. On the contrary, norms have a prescriptive nature, they are the meaning of prescriptive statements or norm formulations. Norm propositions about the existence of legal norms can be called ‘legal propositions’.

Mainly, this contribution is about the semantic objectivity, that is, about whether or not the propositions of a certain kind, in this case legal propositions, can be considered as true or false. The answer to this question presupposes some thesis about the social conditions of the existence of the legal systems and about the legal interpretation. E.g. the legal fact that, in Spain, the capital punishment is prohibited is not a fact totally independent on the beliefs and attitudes of the members of the Spanish legal community, however it is an objective legal fact. On the other hand, legal interpretation is important, because there are some questions, e.g. euthanasia is permitted by the Spanish Constitution?, that only can be answered with the help of a theory of legal interpretation.