Norms and facts

• Authors: Sobek, Tomáš
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

In this paper, I am going to deal with a logical relation between facts and norms. Humans both cognize some facts and take value attitudes to them. But what is a logical relation between these two activities of human thinking? I will focus on what it is for a fact to ground a norm. The normative beliefs that we ground on some facts ultimately always presuppose the acceptance of some normative principles that are no longer dependent on any facts. A full-blooded normativity is coming alive only from the position of participants in legal practice, and thus from within the practice. Ultimately, legal validity is not based on knowledge of a fact, whether normative or empirical. It is based on a practical stance of the acceptance of legal authority. Such an attitude is implicit in the day-to-day practice of human agents who use law without the need to thematise its normative grounds.

Keywords

EN

natural law; equality; non-cognitivism; legal positivism; Hume’s thesis; moral realism

CS

přirozené právo; rovnost (kategorie)

Discipline

• LAW_&_ADMINISTRATION: LAW & ADMINISTRATION

• Publisher: Institute of State and Law, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: The Lawyer Quarterly
• Year: 2017
• Volume: 7
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 180-199
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Sobek, Tomáš

• ---