Resumo

MARCILLA CORDOBA, Gema. Soft Law, Between Auctoritas and Potestas: Institutional Flexibility, Latent Force and Argumentative Efficacy. Isonomía [online]. 2025, n.63, pp.107-130.  Epub 20-Fev-2026. ISSN 1405-0218.  https://doi.org/10.5347/isonomia.63/2025.850.

“Soft law” is a term used by legal scholars and practitioners in contrast to “hard law”, which suffers from semantic indeterminacy, making it difficult to provide a precise definition or a closed catalogue of its manifestations. Nevertheless, it is advisable for legal theory to address these norms since, although they are in principle non-coercive and have a low institutional profile, they produce increasingly significant legal effects. Soft law is legislative or judicially incorporated, and, consequently, increasingly used as an argument in judicial decisions. The debate over the weight it should carry in norms balancing emerges as a key aspect of its legal effectiveness.

Palavras-chave : soft law; normative efficacy; latent force; institutionalisation; legislative transposition; judicial incorporation; norms balancing; legal argumentation.

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