Conclusions

Abstract

In the course of the previous chapters, we have tried to show what basic types of legal sentences there are, and how they should be understood. We have, however, presented them in a polemic, rather than a systematic way, starting from recent controversies in legal theory about how to understand sentences expressing principles, power-conferring rules, permissions, value judgments, and the rule of recognition. This allowed us to analyze these types of sentences, and others we have found to be connected with them. But what is still missing, and what we will embark on now, is a more systematic and ordered presentation of all those types of legal sentences. We will now do this, in two phases: We will begin with a presentation and explanation of a classification of the types of legal sentences introduced earlier; and we will then subject those types to a comparative analysis, according to the three main perspectives that have guided our investigation. Tables 1 and 2 — which schematically reproduce that classification and analysis — will thus be a synthesis of the entire book.