Law in Disagreement

This book examines a particularly important chapter in the history of the jurisprudential debate that has dominated recent decades: the reactions that certain works — and, most notably, Ronald Dworkins work — provoked among defenders of the social-sources thesis, according to which the sources of law are exclusively social. These authors, also called methodological positivists, sought to respond to the Dworkinian challenge by presenting a "conventionalist theory of law." That challenge consisted in a critique of the explanations offered by Hartian positivism of how the rule of recognition becomes normative and generates obligations for the officials for whom it serves as a basis, as well as of the nature of disagreements in the ordinary argumentative legal practices of our courts. These kinds of "theoretical disagreements" — disagreements about the concept of law — affect our disagreements within law. Written in direct and rigorous language, the book offers a rich and convincing overview of the central questions of contemporary legal theory.