Abstract
The contribution carries out an analysis of some of the main techniques used by legal scholars in order to systematize the law, i.e. to provide it with a systematic character. In particular, the contribution first reconstructs some of the juristic operations consisting in deriving (deductively or not) implicit norms from expressed ones. It then goes on to analyze the operations consisting in reformulating a certain set of norms, singling out the “founding” elements of a normative system, highlighting the formal and axiological characteristics, and suggesting, if necessary, the expulsion, from the normative set, of the norms that do not allow this set to have a genuinely systematic nature. Then, the paper carefully examines, in the light of the conceptual dichotomy first/second interpretation, the systematizing tools employed by jurists in order to create, avoid, or ascertain systematic defects of the law, such as normative gaps and inconsistencies. The operations consisting in ordering legal materials in light of a set of underlying principles are finally examined.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See Alchourrón and Bulygin (1971).
- 3.
Alchourrón and Bulygin (1971, pp. 68–69).
- 4.
- 5.
See Guastini (1986).
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
See Bobbio (1994, ch. XV).
- 9.
Guastini (1986, p. 296).
- 10.
Alchourrón and Bulygin (1971, p. 76): “When the source is legislation, the problem has been usually solved in advance (at least in part) by the legislator himself who normally orders the statutes and their contents according to some criterion. This means that he also is engaged in the activity of systematization. This tendency to legislate in a systematic way has increased remarkably since the enactment of the Code Napoleon (the trend towards codification of the law). The characteristic feature of this procedure is that the statutes or the paragraphs of a code are grouped according to different topics […] It should be noted that so far as theory is concerned, the legislator who draws up a statute is engaged in exactly the same activity as the dogmatic jurist: both are constructing a normative system, although the former is not bound by pre-existing (valid) sentences, but chooses them more or less freely”.
- 11.
Cf. Van Hoecke (1986, p. 219): “D’un pont de vue historique la dogmatique juridique a longtemps eu comme objectif principal la systématisation d’un droit coutumier et d’une jurisprudence fragmentaire et hétérogène. Les grandes codifications […] ont d’ailleurs été le travail d’éminants jurisconsultes”.
- 12.
Chiassoni (1999a, p. 91): “At the first-interpretation stage, interpreters perform the following activities: (a) they identify an object as a sentence, or a string of sentences, in a (to them) familiar language; (b) they ascribe to the sentence(s) a first, tentative, meaning – or an array of tentative, possible, meanings”.
- 13.
See Bowers (1989, pp. 49 ff.), who distinguishes “semantic meaning” and “situational meaning”, observing about the latter. At p. 52, the author states: “Although the detailed exposition of situational meaning is complex, involving factors of social background, culture, participants’ knowledge of the world, and the formal status of a text, the basic principles are simple; the effect of an utterance is strongly coloured by its “field”, “tenor”, and “mode”. The field of a discourse is the social action of which it forms a part, including its subject-matter; its tenor is the set of relationships existing among the participants in the discourse – the social roles and status of speakers, hearers and overhearers; the mode of a discourse is its form of expression – spoken, written, formal, informal, private, public, and so on to the details of its actual physical qualities”.
- 14.
- 15.
Alchourrón and Bulygin (1971, p. 72).
- 16.
- 17.
It cannot be excluded that only after having carried out one or more reinterpretations, the jurists regard as useless, due to an ascription of meaning different from the one carried out prima facie, some sentences that she had considered prima facie relevant for the solution of the normative problem at hand.
- 18.
Chiassoni (1999b).
- 19.
- 20.
- 21.
Trimarchi (1961, p. 159). Translation from Italian, here and elsewhere, is mine.
- 22.
“D” is for “damages”, “R” is for “responding for damages”.
- 23.
Which reads: “If there is damage caused by the employee, then the employer is obliged to restore it”.
- 24.
Logical enrichment is the rule according to which if a certain proposition p is a sufficient condition of another proposition q, no matter how many proposition we add to p, in case p is instantiated, q will continue on following from p anyway. In symbols: “(p → q) → (p & r → q)”.
- 25.
Trimarchi (1961, pp. 159–160).
- 26.
This norm is considered in force within the Italian legal order due to its implicit derivation from the principle of liability based on (direct or indirect) negligence of the employer: here we have a first example of non-deductive reasoning.
- 27.
Of course, the system at hand is made complete by what we can call “the norm of closure of liability” ([NCL] ~Dx → ~ORx), which is implicit in Trimarchi’s discourse and is generally recognized by legal scholarship.
[1″] Dx & ~Mx → ORx
[4] Dx & Mx → ~ORx
[NCR] ~Dx → ~ORx
Dx & Mx
~ORx
Dx & ~Mx
ORx
~Dx & Mx
~ORx
~Dx & ~Mx
~ORx
- 28.
Guastini (2013a): 134–135.
- 29.
Trimarchi (1961, p. 6): “With the only tool of formal logic one can infer from legal norms nothing more than what it is expressed by them, since formal deduction is tautological. To go further, to solve the problems that the legislature did not contemplate, or did not solve, often with the stated purpose of entrusting the solution to judges, it is necessary to study the functions that can be regarded as pertaining to the norms, by adequately coordinating and developing them”.
- 30.
Section 1 of the Swiss Civil Code provides: “1. The law applies according to its wording or interpretation to all legal questions for which it contains a provision. 2. In the absence of a provision, the court shall decide in accordance with customary law and, in the absence of customary law, in accordance with the rule that it would make as legislator. 3. In doing so, the court shall follow established doctrine and case law”.
- 31.
Alchourrón (2012, pp. 40–44).
- 32.
Parodi (1996, pp. 102 ff.).
- 33.
- 34.
Section 1337 of the Italian Civil Code provides: “The parties, in negotiating and forming the contract, must act in good faith”.
- 35.
Musy (1997, p. 400).
- 36.
Jori (1985, pp. 320–321).
- 37.
Cf. Minale Costa (2004, pp. 206 ff.).
- 38.
Cf. Trimarchi (1961, pp. 1–6).
- 39.
See Ratti (2014).
- 40.
The normative system can be developed as follows (taking into account the fact that this system also contains what we have called the “norm of closure of liability”): [NCL] ~Dx → ~ORx):
Cases/Norms
[1] Dx → ORx
[5] Dx & ~ Fx → ~ORx
[NCL] ~Dx → ~ORx
Dx & Fx
OR
Dx & ~Fx
OR
~ORx
~Dx & Fx
~ORx
~Dx & ~Fx
~ORx
To make the system consistent, one has to eliminate one of the two inconsistent norms. The elimination of each of the two norms brings about two alternative systems: the system of liability based on negligence and the system of strict liability.
The system of liability based on negligence must be reformulated as follows (the addition of [7], of course, is required by the expulsion of [1], which provided that a compensation was due in the case “Dx & ~Fx”):
Cases/Norms
[7] Dx & Fx → ORx
[5] Dx & ~Fx → ~ORx
[NCL] ~Dx → ~ORx
Dx & Fx
ORx
Dx & ~Fx
~ORx
~Dx & Fx
~ORx
~Dx & ~Fx
~ORx
The system of strict liability should be so reformulated:
Casi/Norme
[1] Dx → ORx
[NCR] ~Dx → ~ORx
D
OR
~D
~ORx
- 41.
ECJ, Heininger and another v. Bayerische Hypo und Vereinsbank AG, January 24, 2002, 9945, in “All England Law Reports”, 2004, European Cases, pp. 1 ff.
- 42.
Section 2.1 (a) provides that: “This Directive shall not apply to: (a) credit agreements or agreements promising to grant credit: – intended primarily for the purpose of acquiring or retaining property rights in land or in an existing or projected building”.
- 43.
ECJ, Heininger and another v. Bayerische Hypo und Vereinsbank AG, p. 11: “To inquire as to a relationship of precedence between the two directives presupposes that they both apply to the case. But that is not the position”.
- 44.
Guastini (2004, pp. 231–237, 248–249).
- 45.
Chiassoni (2001, p. 45).
- 46.
Cf. Guastini (2013b).
- 47.
Here I am referring to the interesting distinction between explicit and implicit gaps provided by Chiassoni (2001, p. 46). By the phrase “explicit gap” Chiassoni means the lack, in relation to a certain set of legal materials LM and a normative question Q, of an explicit norm which provides for the legally relevant case C. By the phrase “implicit gap” he means the lack, in relation to a certain set of legal materials LM and a normative question Q, of an implicit norm which provides for the legally relevant case C.
- 48.
Bessone (1987, pp. 354–355).
- 49.
- 50.
Section 156.1 of the Italian Civil Code provides that “In pronouncing the separation, the judge provides that the spouse, to whom the separation cannot be charged, is entitled to receive what is necessary for his or her maintenance, if he or she does not have adequate incomes of his or her own”.
- 51.
According to the theory of normative systems, the qualification of finer cases does not reach less fine cases. It is not possible to infer from the norm “(Dx & Fx) → ORx” the other norm “Dx → ORx”. The case consisting in damages, but not also in the negligence of the liable person (a case which corresponds, roughly, to the case of strict liability) lacks any normative solution.
- 52.
Bessone (1987, pp. 351–352).
- 53.
Chiassoni (1999c, p. 295).
- 54.
Mazzoni (2003, p. 71).
- 55.
- 56.
- 57.
Alpa (1986, p. 174).
- 58.
Alpa (1985, pp. 213–214, 216–217).
- 59.
Italian Constitutional Court, decision 88/1976.
- 60.
Fiandaca and Musco (1988, pp. 31–32).
- 61.
Fiandaca and Musco (1988, pp. 65–66).
- 62.
Jemolo (2004, pp. 129–130).
- 63.
Cf. Guastini (2004, pp. 219–221). Regarding the differences between balancing and conciliating, see id., p. 219, fn. 60.
- 64.
Guastini (1986).
- 65.
Atienza and Ruiz Manero (2012).
- 66.
Prieto Sanchís (1992, p. 182).
- 67.
Trimarchi (1961, p. 39).
- 68.
Trimarchi (1961, pp. 1–6).
- 69.
See, supra, section 2.1.
References
Aarnio, Aulis. 1977. On legal reasoning. Turku: Turun Yliopisto.
Aarnio, Aulis. 1986. On changes in the systematics of law. In Vernunft und Enfahrung im Rechtsdenken der Gegenwart, Rechtstheorie, Beiheft 10, ed. Torstein Eckhoff, Lawrence Friedman, and Jirky Uusitalo, 161–170. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot.
Aarnio, Aulis. 2011. Essays on the doctrinal study of law. Dordrecht: Springer.
Alchourrón, Carlos Eduardo. 1986. Systematization and change in the science of law. In Vernunft und Enfahrung im Rechtsdenken der Gegenwart, Rechtstheorie, Beiheft 10, ed. Torstein Eckhoff, Lawrence Friedman, and Jirky Uusitalo, 171–184. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot.
Alchourrón, Carlos Eduardo. 2012. On law and logic (1996). In The logic of legal requirements. Essays on defeasibility, ed. J. Ferrer Beltrán and Giovanni Battista Ratti, 39–52. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Alchourrón, Carlos Eduardo, and Eugenio Bulygin. 1971. Normative systems. Wien/New York: Springer.
Alpa, Guido. 1986. L’arte di giudicare. Bari: Laterza.
Alpa, Guido. 1985. Compendio del nuovo diritto privato. Torino: Utet.
Atienza, Manuel, and Juan Ruiz Manero. 2012. Rules, principles, and defeasibility. In The logic of legal requirements. Essays on defeasibility, ed. J. Ferrer Beltrán and Giovanni Battista Ratti, 238–253. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bessone, Mario. 1987. Casi e questioni di diritto privato, III, Obbligazioni e contratti – Responsabilità civile. Milan: Giuffrè.
Bobbio, Norberto. 1994. Contributi ad un dizionario giuridico. Turin: Giappichelli.
Bowers, Frederick. 1989. Linguistic aspects of legislative expression. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
Bulygin, Eugenio. 1982. Time and validity. In Deontic logic, computational linguistics, and legal information systems, vol. II, ed. Antonio A. Martino, 65–81. Amsterdam: North Holland.
Bulygin, Eugenio. 1986. Legal dogmatics and systematization of law. In Vernunft und Enfahrung im Rechtsdenken der Gegenwart, Rechtstheorie, Beiheft 10, ed. Torstein Eckhoff, Lawrence Friedman, and Jirky Uusitalo, 193–210. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot.
Chiassoni, Pierluigi. 1999a. Interpreting games: Statutory construction through Gricean eyes. In Analisi e diritto 1999. Ricerche di giurisprudenza analitica, ed. P. Comanducci and R. Guastini, 79–99. Turin: Giappichelli.
Chiassoni, Pierluigi. 1999b. Interpretazione dei documenti normativi. In Interpretazione e diritto giurisprudenziale, I. Regole, metodi, modelli, ed. M. Bessone, 21–45. Turin: Giappichelli.
Chiassoni, Pierluigi. 1999c. La giurisprudenza civile. Metodi d’interpretazione e tecniche argumentative. Milan: Giuffrè.
Chiassoni, Pierluigi. 2001. Lacune nel diritto. Appunti per una tipologia realistica. In Prassi giuridica e controllo di razionalità, ed. Lucia Triolo, 37–89. Turin: Giappichelli.
Chiassoni, Pierluigi. 2007. Tecnica dell’interpretazione giuridica. Bologna: Il Mulino.
Fiandaca, Giovanni, and Enzo Musco. 1988. Diritto penale, Parte speciale, vol. I. Bologna: Il Mulino.
Guastini, Riccardo. 1986. Production of rules by means of rules. Rechtstheorie 17: 295–309.
Guastini, Riccardo. 2004. L’interpretazione dei documenti normativi. Milan: Giuffrè.
Guastini, Riccardo. 2011. Interpretare e argomentare. Milan: Giuffrè.
Guastini, Riccardo. 2013a. Distinguendo ancora. Madrid: Marcial Pons.
Guastini, Riccardo. 2013b. Juristenrecht: Inventing rights, wrongs, and powers. In Neutrality and theory of law, ed. Jordi Ferrer Beltrán, José Juan Moreso, and Diego M. Papayannis, 147–159. Dordrecht: Springer.
Jemolo, Arturo Carlo. 2004. Ancora sui concetti giuridici. In La polemica sui concetti giuridici, ed. Natalino Irti, 101–148. Milan: Giuffrè.
Jori, Mario. 1985. Saggi di metagiurisprudenza. Milan: Giuffrè.
Mazzoni, Cosimo. 2003. Diritti della personalità. In Lineamenti di diritto privato, ed. Mario Bessone, 65–71. Milan: Giuffrè.
Minale Costa, Enrica. 2004. Percorsi giurisprudenziali nel diritto del lavoro. Turin: Giappichelli.
Musy, Alberto M. 1997. Responsabilità precontrattuale (culpa in contrahendo). In Digesto delle discipline privatistiche. Sezione civile, Vol. XVII, 354–398. Torino: Utet.
Navarro, Pablo Eugenio, and Jorge Luís Rodríguez. 2014. Deontic logic and legal systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Niiniluoto, Ilkka. 1981. On truth and argumentation in legal dogmatics. In Methodologie und Erkenntnistheorie der juristischen Argumentation, Rechtstheorie, Beiheft 2, ed. Aulis Aarnio, Ilkka Niiniluoto, and Jirk Uusitalo, 53–76. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot.
Parodi, Gianpaolo. 1996. Lacune e norme inespresse nella giurisprudenza costituzionale. In Struttura e dinamica dei sistemi giuridici, ed. P. Comanducci and R. Guastini, 87–115. Turin: Giappichelli.
Prieto Sanchís, Luis. 1992. Sobre principios y normas. Problemas del razonamiento jurídico. Madrid: Centro de estudios constitucionales.
Ratti, Giovanni Battista. 2014. Consistencia, completitud y coherencia de los sistemas normativos. In Analisi e diritto, 309–317. Madrid: Marcial Pons.
Rodríguez, Jorge Luis. 2014. Teoria del diritto e analisi logica. Madrid: Marcial Pons.
Ross, Alf. 1958. On Law and Justice. London: Stevens & Sons.
Sacco, Rodolfo. 1988. Introduzione al diritto comparato. Turin: Giappichelli.
Trimarchi, Pietro. 1961. Rischio e responsabilità oggettiva. Milan: Giuffrè.
Van Hoecke, Mark. 1986. La Systématisation dans la Dogmatique Juridique. In Vernunft und Enfahrung im Rechtsdenken der Gegenwart, Rechtstheorie, Beiheft 10, ed. Torstein Eckhoff, Lawrence Friedman, and Jirky Uusitalo, 217–230. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Thomas Bustamante, Pierluigi Chiassoni, Andrea Dolcetti and Riccardo Guastini for very helpful comments on a previous draft of this contribution.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ratti, G.B. (2015). An Analysis of Some Juristic Techniques for Handling Systematic Defects in the Law. In: Bustamante, T., Dahlman, C. (eds) Argument Types and Fallacies in Legal Argumentation. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 112. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16148-8_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16148-8_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16147-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16148-8
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawLaw and Criminology (R0)