This Workshop is dedicated to the exposition, analysis and criticism of the thesis that has served to delineate the boundaries between legal positivism and non-legal positivism. Our speakers will address questions such as the following: What kind of thesis is the thesis of the separation of law and morals? Is it a thesis of semantic, epistemic or ontological character? Is the separation thesis a mere question of validity? How do the various positivist and positivist deniers approach the thesis of separation? Can law be identified without recourse to moral arguments or, on the contrary, is morality necessarily included in the concept of law or, on the contrary, are the relations between morality and law merely contingent and dependent on positive law? Does law have a “minimum content” of moral character or, on the contrary, is there a hard core of our legal practices whose identification does not require moral argumentation? Can legal norms have any content or, on the contrary, are there moral limits to the validity of legal norms? In addition to social facts, does law require a robust normativity that includes morality or, on the contrary, does law’s claim to authority imply the exclusion of morality? Are morally flawed legal norms legally defective? Are morally flawed legal norms legally invalid in all cases, in some cases or not at all? Is the connection between morality and law a semantic, epistemic or ontological connection? Does law necessarily have formal moral features? When norms refer to morality, do they make an empty reference, since the object of reference is non-existent or, on the contrary, does the connection between morality and law presuppose the unity of practical reasoning? Is justice a specific and characteristic value of law? Does the mere existence of law have a moral value? Is the thesis of the separation between law and morality the hallmark of positivism or, on the contrary, is it just a myth?
We invite abstracts written in English of no more than 400 words by Sunday, May 15, 2022. The working language of the workshop will be English. The proceedings will be published in an edited collection or journal.
Contact: separationthesispecialworkshop@gmail.com
