Law, Values and State: Fundaments of Derivation Theories

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss the material determinations of systems of law and values in contemporary societies. Sustained upon a combined analysis of Pashukanis and Althusser, we criticise the positivist theories of Kelsen and Hart due to the emptiness of what these latter postulate as the bedrock of legal systems. Norms are argued, contrarily to what positivist authors defended, to be a secondary aspect of law, essentially characterized by the relations it comprehends between legal subjects, that take place in an economy of production and exchange of value between formally free and equal subjects. Thus, legal subjectivity-form mirrors commodity form, for it is logically necessary for contracts to be celebrated from the will of the parties. Otherwise, the situation would be only of imposition by force. In the last section of the paper, the ideological origin of the will and the values shared among the people is discussed.