ABSTRACTAt first sight, the work of the German legal philosopher and constitutional theorist, Robert Alexy, appears to offer a welcome counter-example to the general insulation of Anglo-American ju...

The essay discusses the import of the separability thesis both for legal positivism and for contemporary legal practice. First, the place of the separability thesis in legal positivism will be explored, distinguishing between “standard positivism” and “post‐Hartian positivism.” Then I will consider various kinds of relations between law and morality that are worthy of jurisprudential interest, and explore, from a positivist point of view, what kind of relations between law and morality must be rejected, what kind of such relations should (...) be taken into account, and what kind of such relations are indeed of no import at all. The upshot of this analysis consists in highlighting the distinction between two different dimensions of legal validity (formal validity and material validity respectively), and in pointing out that the positivist separability thesis can apply to formal validity only. On the other hand, when the ascertainment of material validity is at stake, some form of moral reasoning may well be involved (here and now, it is necessarily involved). The essay concludes with some brief remarks on the persisting importance of the positivist jurisprudential project. (shrink)

This article surveys methodological matters that shape, drive, and plague analytic legal philosophy. Section 2 briefly explicates conceptual analysis, analytic definitions, and family resemblance concepts. It also argues that central cases are used in more than one way. Section 3 presents criticisms of those concepts and methods, and suggests that some of these difficulties are due to the lack of a shared paradigm regarding a counterexample’s impact. Section 4 explains “meta- theoretical” desiderata. It contends that, to date, legal philosophical appeals (...) to such norms have not been as helpful as some suggest. Section 5 returns to the issue of concept selection by addressing whether legal theorising is an invariably “normative” enterprise. It argues that certain “normativist” methodologies, such as Dworkin’s constructive interpretation and Finnis’ appeal to the central case of the internal point of view, are unnecessary. (shrink)