The truth of the law without truth

Journal title SOCIOLOGIA DEL DIRITTO
Author/s Massimo La Torre
Publishing Year 2013 Issue 2013/1
Language Italian Pages 13 P. 187-199 File size 189 KB
DOI 10.3280/SD2013-001014
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The positive law tradition and even legal modernism seem to suggest it would be advisable to maximise the distance between the production of law and the ascertainment of truth. These two fields are kept decidedly and apparently clearly separate. Law is construed as truth, or is superimposed on it, only for those who espouse the natural law doctrine or for clerics, but once the positive and procedural origins of the law are recognised secularly, the logical consequence ought to be to proceed to preach the truth. Thus goes the thesis of law without truth, which is also offered as a political or ethical option. The truth in law could thus only be authoritarian, so it would be beneficial to do without it. An abstentionist or non-cognitive attitude is what suits lawyers best. That, at least, is what is held by exponents of positive law. Nevertheless, what they contrast with the truth is not the freedom of the independent individual, but the authority of the sovereign power, whose legitimacy derives from being a remedy for the cognitive deficiency and lack of truth that afflicts the law and in general the experience of lawgiving. The article discusses this theoretical construct and wonders whether a law without truth would be capable of holding up without a truth of its own that would not be solely descriptive, but also once again a source of lawgiving.

Keywords: Concept of law, Truth, Positive law doctrine, Metaethical non-cognitivism, Natural law doctrine, Facts and values

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Massimo La Torre, La verità del diritto senza verità in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL DIRITTO " 1/2013, pp 187-199, DOI: 10.3280/SD2013-001014