2023_24
Educational guide 
Faculty of Legal Sciences
A A A 
english 
Bachelor's Degree in Law (2009)
 Subjects
  THEORY OF LAW
   Contents
Topic Sub-topic
THEME 1. THE PLACE OF LAW IN SOCIAL RELATIONS 1. The place of law in the system of social relations
1.1 Law and social order
1.2. The normative constitution of social life.
2. The authonomy of the legal subsystem
2.1. Law as a subsystem of the social system
2.2. historical process of diferentiation of the legal subsystem
3. Validity, efficacy, justice
3.1. Three perspectives in the assessment of norms
3.2. The notion of validity
3.3. The notion of efficacy
3.4. The notion of justice/legitimacy
THEME 2. SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF LAW 1. Concept of social function and functional analysis of law
2. Basic tipology of law's functions
2.1. behavior guidance
2.1.1. Socialization and social control
2.1.2. Social control techniques
2.2. Conflict resolution
2.3. Legitimation of power: the rule of law
2.4. Legal certainty
2.5. Distributive function, goods and services provision: social rule of law
2.6. Law and justice
THEME 3. LAW AND OTHER NORMATIVE ORDERS 1. Introduction: social relations are always normative
2. Prescriptive use of language and differences between law and social convention
3. Differences between law, religion, moral and ethic
4. Law and economy
5. Political power and law
5.1. Political power as a normative order
5.2. Distinctive feature of politics versus law
5.3. Critics on power
THEME 4. CONCEPTIONS OF LAW 1. What is law?
2. Conceptions of law
2.1. Iusnaturalism or the natural law doctrine
2.1.1. Which elements characterize a iusnaturalistic theory?
2.1.2. Brief incursion into some stages of the development of iusnaturalism
2.2. Legal positivism
2.2.1. Which elements characterize a legal positivist theory?
2.2.2. Brief incursion into some stages of the development of legal positivism
2.2.3. Raising law to a science: the pure theory of law
2.2.4. The opone texture of law and legal positivism as a method
2.3. The legal realism current
3. Iusnaturalism and legal positivism: the contemporaneous debate
3.1. Contemporaneous iusnaturalisms
3.1.1. Radbruch's formule
3.1.2. Law's intern moral
3.1.3. Beyond iusnaturalism. Postpositivists approaches
3.2. Contemporaneous legal positivism
3.2.1. Inclusive and exclusionary legal positivism
3.2.2. Guarantee-based constitutionalism
THEME 5. THE LEGAL NORM 1. Uses of language and legal norms
2. Definition and estructure of normative formulations in legal orders.
2.1. Factual conditions, legal consequence and deontic connector
2.2. Elements of normative formulations
2.2.1. Normative core
2.2.2. Other elements of normative formulations
3. Primary and secondary norms
3.1. Primary norms
3.2. Secondary norms
3.2.1. The norm of recognition
3.2.2. Norms of change
3.2.3. Norms of adjudication or application
4. Norms that confer powers (or constitutive norms -in a wide sense-)
4.1. Pure constitutive norms
4.2. Constitutive norms -in strict sense-
5. Legal definitions
6. Legal principles
6.1. Implicit and explicit principles
6.2. Principles and rules as a qualitatively distinct kind of norms
6.3. What positions do iuspositivisms stand in relation to principles?
7. Directives and programatic norms
THEME 6. TLE LEGAL ORDER 1. Law as a system and the hierarchy of norms
1.1. The notion of legal system and law as a system
1.2. Criteria for identifying legal systems
2. Ideal features of legal systems: unity, plenitude and coherence
2.1. The unity of the legal order
2.1.1. Relation between unity and validity
2.1.2. Theoretical proposals on the unity of the legal order
2.2. The plenitude of legal order
2.2.1. The notion of plenitude
2.2.2. The legal loopholes
2.2.3. Integration procedures
2.2.4. Improper loopholes
2.3. The coherence of the legal order
2.3.1. The notion of coherence
2.3.2. Legal antinomies
2.3.3. The criteria of resolution
2.3.4. The weighting judgement
THEME 7. SOURCES OF LAW PRODUCTION 1. Act-sources
2. Fact-sources
3. The judiciary as a source
4. The implicit law: legal doctrine and general principles of law
THEME 8. LEGAL INTERPRETATION 1. Introduction
2. What does to interpret mean? Què significa interpretar? Object of the legal interpretation: the legal wording
3. Theories on legal interpretation
4. Criteria of interpretation and special interpretive arguments
4.1. Interpretative arguments
4.2. Special arguments
5. Aplication of law
6. Regles bàsiques de l’adjudicació
7. Justificació de la premissa fàctica
8. Justificació de la premissa normativa
9. Activitat creativa dels jutges i tribunals
THEME 9. LEGAL REASONING 1. What does to reason mean? Law as a practical reasoning
2. Dimensions of legal reasoning
2.1. Formal reasoning
2.2. Material reasoning
2.3. Pragmatic reasoning
3. Argumentative and interpretative problems
4. Paradigmatic forms of legal reasoning
4.1. Subsumptive reasoning
4.2. Teleological reasoning
4.3. Weighting judgement
5. Assessment of the arguments
5.1. Universalization
5.2. Normative coherence
5.3. Narrative coherence
5.4. Consequentialist reasoning
THEME 10. HUMAN RIGHTS: PRINCIPLES, EVOLUTION AND GUARANTEE MECHANISMS 1. An approach
2. Processes in the evolution of human rights
3. The principles of human rights
4. Rights and duties