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Natural Law, Positivism, and the Limits of Jurisprudence: A Modern Round

1982; The Yale Law Journal Company; Volume: 91; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/796053

1939-8611

Ruth Gavison, Joseph Raz, John Finnis,

Legal Systems and Judicial Processes

In his recent collection of essays,' Joseph Raz presents and defends a version of positivism; in his first book-length contribution to legal philosophy,' John Finnis explores a natural law perspective.These two books, both published by Oxford, may thus serve as a reminder of the persistence of the debate between legal positivists and those adhering to the natural law tradition.As this review will show, the books demonstrate that these apparently contradictory schools of thought both can and must be integrated to enhance our understanding of the complex phenomenon of law.Rather than rival theories of law, positivism and natural law are, and should be taken to be, complementary and equally necessary approaches to a social institution of the utmost importance.The call to integrate these theories of law is anything but revolutionary.Sensitive legal scholars, even those who clearly identify themselves as adhering to one school or the other, have always granted that the two perspectives are complementary rather than contradictory, and that the appeal of neither is transitory?Raz and Finnis, while presenting approaches t Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Hebrew