The Ever Changing Legal Dimension and the Controversial Notions of Law and Science

• Autore: Orlando Roselli
• Pagine: 27-28

The Ever Changing Legal Dimension

and the Controversial Notions of Law and Science

ORLA NDO ROSEL LI∗

SUMM ARY:1. The Apparent Paradox of the Diff‌iculty to Def‌ine What the Law Is – 2.

The Necessary Opening of Legal Culture to Social Transformations – 3. Historicity of

Law. Be yond a Concept with Only a Western Matrix – 4. The Change in ‘Legality’

in Modern Societies Focusing on Pluralism – 4.1. Technological Advances, Changing

Factual and Cultural References and the Consequences within the Legal Dimension –

5. The Idea of Science and the Concept of the Completeness or Incompleteness of the

Legal Order

1. THE AP PAREN T PARAD OX OF TH E DIFF ICU LTY TO DE FINE WH AT

THE LAW IS

An apparent paradox characterises the work of the jurist: the diff‌iculty of

def‌ining the object of his investigation. The most diff‌icult question to f‌ind

an answer for is precisely what is the law1.

To understand the nature of the legal dimension, it is necessary to begin

with an awareness of that very paradox and the diff‌iculty it brings with it.

For a long time, the dominant legal culture, in particular, in civil law

countries, aspired to give a def‌initive replyto this question: the presumption

of the certainty of the law and the completeness of the legal order appeared

to be features of the legal dimension that could not be renounced; these are

objectives that can be pursued, according to this approach, attributing the

monopoly of law-making to the State and reducing the role of the jurist to

that of a simple commentator of the legislator’s intent2.

∗The Author is full professor of Istituzioni di diritto pubblico, University of Florence

(Italy).

The Italian language version of this article will be published in the volume: O.

ROSEL LI,Lezioni sulle trasformazioni della dimensione giuridica, Napoli, ESI, forthcoming.

1So much so that it has been said that asking what is the law is a “persistent”question, see

H.L.A. HART,The Concept of Law, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1994, II ed. (Italian translation,

Il concetto di diritto, Torino, Einaudi, 2002), cited in SIMO NCIN I A., Cos’è il diritto? Una

domanda “persistente”, in Ventorino F., Barcellona P., Simoncini A., “La lotta tra diritto e

giustizia”, Genova-Milano, Marietti, 2008, p. 149 ff.

2For a critique of this claim, see, for this purpose, the great number of scientif‌ic worksby

P. GROSSI, in par ticular, Assolutismo giuridico e diritto privato, Milano, Giuffrè, 1998, and

Mitologie giuridiche della modernità, Milano, Giuffrè, 2001.

“Informatica e diritto”, Vol. XXII, 2013, n. 1, pp. 27-38

XXXIX annata – Seconda Serie - Fasc. monografico S. Faro, N. Lettieri (a cura di), "Law and Computational Social Science", ESI, Napoli, 2013, 352 p.