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Today the role of experts is pervasive in the everyday life of both individuals and communities. At the collective level, governments and groups routinely delegate scientific, economic and technological decisions to experts; expert witnesses play a key role in legal contexts, and the evaluation of academic and scientific institutions is demanded to expert peers. At the individual level, each of us defers to experts for the correct understanding of problems, issues, concepts and word meanings in some domains, and trusts experts blindly at least in some cases. Finally, both communities and individuals face the problem of what to do when experts disagree

This chapter seeks to explain and evaluate Shapiro’s theory of legal interpretation, as it is outlined in his recent book ‘Legality’. More specifically, in the following I will try to provide (a) a reconstruction of Shapiro’s theory of legal interpretation, as it is developed in ‘Legality’; (b) an assessment of this theory of interpretation on its own terms (i.e. its internal coherence, its overall persuasiveness); and (c) an evaluation of the compatibility of this theory of legal interpretation with the general project of ‘law as plan’.

In this chapter, I develop an hypothesis about the psychology of normativity. Normativity, I suggest, emerges through the structuring of multiple layers of intra-personal and inter-personal cognitive control.

In this paper, we discuss the notion of inevitable ignorance that the Italian Constitutional Court has introduced in justifying a restriction of the legal maxim Ignorantia legis non excusat. In particular, we argue that the epistemic flavor of the notion extends to the notion of inevitability beside that of ignorance, and we offer an epistemic analysis of the notion. This analysis is based both on the legal-theoretical framework defined by the justification of the restriction of the maxim, and on a discussion of some paradigmatic Italian cases where the standard of excusability involving inevitable ignorance is applied. The analysis reveals that the notion of inevitable ignorance is closely connected to a number of notions also used in formal epistemology, such as belief, evidence, rationality, and trust.

Per il positivismo giuridico tradizionale, l’idea che alcune norme create dal legislatore attraverso atti di normazione formalmente validi possano costituire “diritto illegittimo” sembra essere una contraddizione in termini. Questa tesi viene tuttavia messa esplicitamente in discussione nella teoria assiomatizzata del diritto di Luigi Ferrajoli, che pur si propone come uno sviluppo della teoria pura del diritto di Hans Kelsen. Il dissenso da Kelsen si incentra sul problema dell’applicazione dei principi logici di contraddizione e di implicazione al diritto, applicazione impossibile per Kelsen, necessaria invece per Ferrajoli per l’identificazione del diritto illegittimo. Gli autori della prefazione ricostruiscono i nodi teorici fondamentali della critica di Ferrajoli a Kelsen, e mostrano come Ferrajoli proponga di superare i limiti della teoria pura kelseninana attraverso l'elaborazione di un costituzionalismo logico. For traditional legal positivism, the idea that certain legal norms created through valid enactments can be "unlawful law" seems to be self-contradictory. This view is explicitly disputed by Luigi Ferrajoli's axiomatized theory of law, which is nonetheless presented as a development of Hans Kelsen's pure theory of law. The dispute focus on the problem of the application of the logical principles of contradiction and implication to legal systems: an impossible application for Kelsen, a necessary one for Ferrajoli, since the theory of law should identify "unlawful norms" within the legal system. The authors of this preface reconstruct the main theoretical claims of Ferrajoli's critique to Kelsen, and show how he suggests to overcome the theoretical limits of the pure theory of law through the delieation of a logical constitutionalism.

Luigi Ferrajoli, in his work La logica del diritto. Dieci aporie nell’opera di Hans Kelsen (2016), pointed out ten aporias in Hans Kelsen’s pure theory of law. This paper deals with the fifth aporia, that is the of Kelsen’s concept of a “norm”. The paper firstly distinguishes two different questions on the concept of a norm underlying the pure theory of law: the question “What is a norm?”, and the question “What has the meaning of a norm within a legal system?”; it secondly distinguishes three different levels of interpretation of a norm: (i) interpretation of the semantic meaning of norm sentences, (ii) interpretation of the subjective intrinsic pragmatic meaning of the norm creating act; (iii) interpretation of the extrinsic objective normative meaning of the norm creating act; it thirdly suggests that the existence of a norm is the ideal (ideel) existence of a meaning, not the empirical existence of an act.

In this article I discuss the concepts elaborated by riccardo guastini of cognitive and creative interpretation

Shapiro works out a version of legal positivism, taking as its starting point Hart’s practice theory of law. Some serious limits of Hart’s practice theory of norms concern the conception of legal obligation and normativity of law. In this chapter, I analyze the limits of Hart’s conception of legal normativity and I appraise whether the planning theory of law indicates the correct direction for overcoming them. To anticipate the conclusion, my effort is to show that Shapiro replicates Hart’s mistakes on these subject matters. This chapter is divided into three main sections. First, I will present briefly a critical reconstruction of Hart’s conception of normativity, a reconstruction which is partially different from that given by Shapiro in Legality. I will analyze either the original conception of normativity sketched out by Hart in The Concept of Law and the (partially) different conceptions which can be drawn by the Postscript. Then, I will deepen the conceptions of legal obligation and authority of law associated with the planning theory of law. Few concluding remarks will be devoted to some Shapiro’s assumptions on legal positivism.

1. Introduction. 2. The Transcendental Interpretation of the Claim-to-correctness Thesis. 3. Claim to Correctness and Degree of Pragmatic Contradictoriness. 4. The Claim to Correctness, Performative Contradictions, and Brandom's Theory of Practical Reason. 5. Inferentialism, Social Practices and Practical Disagreements. 5.1. Inferential Disagreements. 5.2. Practical Disagreements. 6. Conclusion.

Nel saggio l'autore propone una riflessione sulla natura del ragionamento giuridico; il problema può essere posto in questi termini: le regole di inferenza messe in opera nel ragionamento giuridico sono di natura meramente positiva o sono invece di natura logica (nello stesso senso in cui sono logiche le regole della matematica)? L'Autore cerca di illuminare la domanda, presupponendo che il linguaggio giuridico sia un linguaggio amministrato, nel senso definito da Mario Jori, basato sul linguaggio comune e concentrandosi in particolare sulle proprietà inferenziali del verbo modale italiano 'dovere'; il punto di vista adottato non è quello della logica deontica tradizionale, ma quello della semantica cognitiva. L'autore ritiene che le relazioni logiche che sono connesse, e forse inerenti, all'utilizzo del 'dovere' si fondino nel linguaggio ordinario: gli esempi e le prove proposte sono giustificate dalla pratica quotidiana della lingua italiana. Ma questo, naturalmente, non significa che tutte queste inferenze siano consentite nel linguaggio giuridico: in un contesto normativo, anche le inferenze logiche sono sottoposte all'attribuzione una validità deontica (e non semplicemente alla validità logica).