Abstract

This paper addresses the problem that legal scholars experience in research budget competition and quality assessment exercises: what is the epistemological status of law as an academic enterprise, and how does it relate to other sciences, in particular social sciences, from an epistemological point of view? It defends the rather Kelsenian view that legal theories are about a model of the constitution, articulated in terms of competences, i.e. the power to set legal norms in certain circumstances and under specific constraints. This view can accommodate some important requirements for accepting ‘theory’ in law in terms of an epistemological pursuit: its statements have truth value, even to the point where they can be tested as predictions; they can keep political power at bay by rephrasing legal norms de re rather than de dicto; they can embed statements from other disciplines to the extent that these provide alternative descriptions of agents, acts, and circumstances involved in setting or following legal norms. The overall picture, however, remains that theory in law is theory on legal norms qua norms. This makes, for instance, sociological method in law theories something quite different from sociology applied to the domain of law