0477722 - ÚSP 2018 RIV CZ eng J - Journal Article
Sobek, Tomáš
Norms and Facts.
The Lawyer Quarterly. Roč. 7, č. 3 (2017), s. 180-199. ISSN 1805-8396. E-ISSN 1805-840X
R&D Projects: GA ČR GA13-30299S
Institutional support: RVO:68378122
Keywords : natural law * legal positivism * Hume’s thesis
OECD category: Law

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.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0273971