The Concept of Law: A Wittgensteinian Approach with some Ethnomethodological Specificiations
Résumé
The question "what is law" is devoid of relevance. There is no such thing as law per se. There are only ascriptive uses of normative words and expressions sharing family resemblances across languages, cultures, institutions, activities and contexts. By ascriptive, I mean that these words serve to qualify several kinds of entities, e.g. persons, actions, places and groups. As a consequence, there is no definition of law that should be looked for; one may only achieve descriptions of the surface and deep grammars of these normative "language games". Law is not an empirical reality that must be discovered; it is a conceptual issue that cannot be severed from the context of its uses. This paper is an effort at clarifying all this. It will not reveal anything new, but will help to sort out questions, avoid logical deadlocks, put issues straight, and set the proper conditions for the adequate description of normative language games at work. Centuries of definitional endeavours have not solved the question of what "law" is.
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