Unpacking Normativity: Conceptual, Normative, and Descriptive Issues

This book provides a new and wide-ranging study of law's normativity, examining conceptual, descriptive and empirical dimensions of this perennial philosophical issue. It also contains essays concerned with, among other issues, the relationship between semantic and legal normativity; methodological concerns pertaining to understanding normativity; normativity and legal interpretation; and normativity as it pertains to transnational law. The contributors come not only from the usual Anglo-American and Western European community of legal theorists, but also from Latin American and Eastern European communities, representing a diversity of perspectives and points of view – including essays from both analytic and continental methodologies. With this range of topics, the book will appeal to scholars in transnational law, legal sociology, normative legal philosophy concerned with problems of state legitimacy and practical rationality, as well as those working in general jurisprudence. It comprises a highly important contribution to the study of law's normativity.

Kenneth Einar Himma is Part-time Lecturer at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Miodrag Jovanovic is Full Professor in Jurisprudence at the University of Belgrade, Serbia.

Bojan Spaic is Assistant Professor in General Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Belgrade.