Abstract

REDONDO, María Cristina. The Method and the Object of Legal Theory: An Ambiguity in the Internal/External Distinction. Anal. filos. [online]. 2018, vol.38, n.2, pp.115-156. ISSN 1851-9636.

The main goal of this work is to present a critical argument against those interpretivist positions according to which legal theory must assume an internal point of view in order to be able to identify and explain institutional concepts. A substantial part of the work is devoted, on the one hand, to stressing the ambiguity of this thesis and, on the other hand, to distinguishing the epistemic and the pragmatic senses of the expressions "internal point of view" and "external point of view". The uncovering of this ambiguity permits, first, to grasp different ways in which institutional concepts can be understood, and, secondly, to recognise a peculiar kind of indeterminacy affecting the discourse about social institutions in general, and legal institutions in particular. The central claim of this work is that in order to identify and explain an institutional concept legal theory must adopt an internal point of view in the epistemic sense, but not in the pragmatic one. The final part of the article suggests that the criticism directed to those interpretivist positions that assume indistinctly the necessity of an internal point of view can be generalised and thus applied as well against their radical opposites which presuppose the necessity of an external point of view. The conclusion is that there is more than one adequate method of study in legal theory and, especially, that the right method depends on the way in which we understand the object of our study - in this case, institutional concepts or the content of legal institutions.

Keywords : Internal point of view; External point of view; Legal theory; Institutional concepts; Normative Legal Positivism.