Abstract

The author starts with the assumption that present‐day Western society is complex, pluralistic and conflictual in nature. Because of these qualities of society, law appears as an ineluctable means for the regulation of societal relationships. Law does not express an amorphous common good, nor is it simply an instrument of power. Law turns the socio‐ethical and political conception that discursively prevails in the competition among the diverging conceptions of dynamic social groups into generally binding standards of conduct. In the socio‐axiological concept of law presented here, law exhibits the conflicting character of the open, pluralistic society and brings about understanding for democracy and discursive‐deliberative politics. These are favourable presuppositions for the acceptability of law.