I. Legal Positivism Analysed

In 1961, the outstanding Italian legal philosopher Norberto Bobbio introduced an unsurpassed analysis of legal positivism (LP).¹ In his view, the phrase “LP” is actually used in juristic literature with different meanings, referring to three different and logically independent doctrines (^{Bobbio 1961}, part II; see also ^{Bobbio 1965}, 101 ff.).²

(i) Methodological positivism. In the first place, LP is a methodological attitude, namely a value-free approach to law. The philosophy of (legal) science of LP circumscribes the object of (legal) science to the law as it actually is, excluding any inquiry about the law as it ought to be. Legal cognition is expository, not censorial, jurisprudence.³

In John Austin’s words: «The existence of law is one thing, its merit or demerit is another. Whether it be or be not is one enquiry; whether it be or be not conformable to an assumed standard, is a different enquiry. A law, which actually exists, is a law though we happen to dislike it».⁴

It should be stressed that, according to Bobbio, this methodological attitude is actually shared by modern legal scholars, who are used to distinguish between jus conditum and jus condendum and consider only jus conditum as the appropriate subject of their inquiry – in other words, in his view, the actual work of legal scholars is a purely descriptive enterprise.⁵

At any rate, the positivistic value-free approach to law presupposes a criterion of identification of positive law itself – such a criterion is provided by a theory of law, and this is the second face of LP (or LP par excellence).

(ii) Theoretical positivism. In the second place, LP is a theory of law, namely the theory generally shared by 19th century jurists,⁶ which includes a number of substantive theses, such as the following:

(iii) Ideological positivism. In the third place, LP is an ideology, that is a normative stance according to which positive law ought to be obeyed – there is a (moral or political) obligation to obey the law. On the footsteps of Hobbes, justice is identified with positive law.

It should be stressed that ideological positivism, understood this way, is no specified (substantive) normative ethics – rather it is a normative (“formal”) meta-ethics, in the sense that it does not command any definite behaviour, but simply commands to comply with the rules issued by legal authorities (whatever their contents may be). Such an attitude – equal and contrary, so to say, to natural law doctrine, as characterized by Bobbio – is called “ethical legalism” or “ethical formalism”.

To be sure, such three positivistic doctrines, although logically independent, share the “no natural law” thesis – no natural law exists, the only existing “law” (properly understood) being positive law, that is, law “posited” by human norm-creating acts. As Uberto Scarpelli said, laws are not “given” to men, but “made” by them (^{Scarpelli, 1984}, and ¹⁹⁸⁹, 461). The legal character of any entity (a fact, a subject, etc.) depends entirely on its being the object of a legal norm that refers to it (^{Carcaterra 1984}, 5).⁷

II. The Opposition between LP and Legal Realism

In Italian legal-philosophical literature, LP is often (or even usually) opposed to legal realism.⁸ One has to wonder, however: what kind of LP and what kind of legal realism are we talking about?

(i) As to legal realism, those scholars who oppose realism and positivism have in mind most of all Scandinavian Realism, especially Olivecrona and Ross (^{Olivecrona 1971}; ^{Ross 1958}), completely disregarding American (or Italian, or French) legal realism. This is doubly surprising.

It is true that Olivecrona is a severe critic of LP, but the kind of LP he criticizes is essentially the voluntaristic view about legal norms held by 19th century jurists, such a view being a component of LP understood as a theory of law (in Bobbio’s sense).⁹ However, Olivecrona, on the tracks of Hägerström,¹⁰ definitely shares the methodological side of LP – the view according to which science (in general, including legal science) is a wertfrei empirical enterprise that has to do only with observable phenomena (^{Olivecrona 1971}, 56).

Ross, in turn, is a strong defender of methodological LP – against Kelsen’s concept of validity understood as binding force, that he pictures as a sort of disguised natural law thesis (“quasi-positivism,” ^{Ross 1961}), as well as against Hartian “internal point of view” (^{Ross 1962}). Legal science, according to him, is a set of purely descriptive “external” sentences identifying the law in force.¹¹

(ii) As to LP, those scholars who oppose realism and positivism have in mind either the 19th century prevailing theory of law or Kelsen’s pure theory.¹²

To be sure, the opposition between legal realism and the pure theory is sound. Nonetheless, such an opposition does not arise from a supposed anti-positivistic stance of legal realists. It depends on two non-positivistic theses endorsed by Kelsen: on the one hand, the concept of validity as binding force (^{Ross 1961}); on the other hand, the normative theory of legal science, conceived of a set of deontic (non-factual) sentences echoing valid (i.e., binding) norms (^{Ross 1958}, 38 ff.).

The opposition between legal realism and 19th century LP is equally sound – especially if one takes into account the radically sceptical view of legal realism about interpretation (^{Guastini 2011}) – but does not hold when referred to contemporary LP.

III. Contemporary LP

Nowadays, in the legal philosophy of the 20th and 21th centuries – since ^{Hart (1958)} and ^{Bobbio (1961)} – LP is mainly conceived of as a methodological attitude towards the law (^{Bulygin 2006}).¹³ All “classical” positivistic views – as to the very nature of law (viewed as a set of commands backed by the threat of sanctions), the structure of legal systems (assumedly gapless and consistent), and legal interpretation (conceived of as a merely cognitive enterprise) – are by now mostly dismissed.¹⁴

The main theses, strictly methodological, of contemporary LP (by the way, shared by Kelsen) are the following.

(i) First, as a matter of course, contemporary positivism denies the existence of so-called natural law (however conceived), assuming law to be a human artefact.¹⁵ There are no norms in the very nature of “things” or human relationships – no norm exists without a human act of normative creation. As Kelsen (echoing W. Dubislav) rightly says: “Kein Imperativ ohne Imperator”, that is, no command without anyone commanding (^{Kelsen 1965}). So-called “natural law” is not law properly understood, but (at most) critical morality (^{Bobbio 1963}, 67; ¹⁹⁶⁵, 179 ff.).¹⁶ Natural law arises from an evident violation of Hume’s principle – no norms can be (logically) derived from factual statements.¹⁷

(ii) Second, LP is a scientific attitude towards the law, grounded on the distinction between expository and censorial jurisprudence – between the law as it actually is and the law as it ought to be (according to some standard of evaluation). Describing the existing law and evaluating it are two different and independent intellectual enterprises. By the way, it is precisely this feature of LP that is currently refused by non-positivist (as well as “soft positivist”) legal scholars – they claim that law cannot even be identified without some kind of moral evaluation.¹⁸

(iii) Third, as a consequence of Hume’s principle, no “objective” (moral or political) obligation to obey the law exists – the knowledge of legal norms does not involve any obligation to obey them. To be sure, obedience is what lawmakers demand, but no binding force, no obligation to obey, is conceptually entailed by the very existence or legal validity of a norm. Obedience presupposes not only cognition, or “recognition” (in Hart’s sense), but also axiological acceptance by the addressees.¹⁹

A perfect characterization of contemporary LP can be read in a paper by ^{von Wright (1985, 380)}: «The term “legal positivism” embraces a variety of positions among which there is a family resemblance. A common feature of many members of the family is the idea of a sharp separation of Is and Ought. Another is the non-cognitivist view that norms are prescriptions and therefore neither true nor false. As a third we may count the view that norms are “posited”».

All such three features of contemporary LP are shared by LR (^{Bobbio 1965}, 156), which combines an empiricist conception of legal cognition with a sceptical view on interpretation. LR is an openly positivistic view about the law. To be sure, not all positivist legal scholars are realists, but all realists are (“hard”) positivists.²⁰