| Popis: |
Law is a social construct. As such it is the result of a process that begins either in civil society or in political institutions, but which in the end engages all of these actors. The study of law has for a long time been guided by the positivist principle according to which law is neutral – a claim of neutrality that underlies the very functioning of modern judicial institutions. However, a growing number of authors today do recognize the falsity of this positivist proposition. As Jurgen Habermas writes, ‘the law is not a narcissistic system closed in upon itself, but is rather irrigated by the democratic social morality of citizens and by a liberal political culture that favours its development’.2 According to the jurist Pierre Noreau, the law is ‘the expression of a social transaction’,3 made possible by a complex process of objectification and subjectification of the judicial norm. |
