Questions about legal positivism

Abstract

Kaarlo Tuori's recent book on legal positivism offers a good opportunity for revising positivism's merits as the hegemonic concept of law in modern times. The paper especially deals with two interesting theses defended in the book. The first thesis is a view of legal realism as opposite or alternative to positivism, which is identified as a concept of law where rules are the basic material of law and normativity is equivalent to a structure of rules for directing conducts.  The second thesis is the sterility of conceptual analysis in jurisprudence, whereby the concept of law is studied and assessed through an essentialist approach to the "nature" of law, this being now mostly taken in the Anglo-American legal theory. The paper on the one hand discusses the too strong distinction between legal realism and positivism proposed, defending rather a close connection between the two perspectives. On the other hand, the critical consideration of conceptual analysis is seen as a relevant and fruitful contribution of Tuori's book and is further discussed.