Foundations of Legal Concepts and Expression

Right

A) Concept of Law

The law is defined by its essential relationship to the concept of justice, depending on the various individual relationships that define the Law:

• Commutative Justice: Community members must interact fairly among themselves.
• Distributive Justice: What the Community owes each of its members.
• Legal Justice: What the members owe their Community.

Therefore, the law thus defined, aims at two purposes: to give each member what is his (i.e., the law understood as a tool for the development of our inner, private life). The law will define the various connections with which to adjust the social order.

b) Modes of Expression of the Law

The Latin tradition has always used the term 'right' to refer to the dialectical unity, a duality that can serve people and then build the social order. But there are different manifestations of right stemming from that duality:

The Objective Right and the Subjective Right

This is the simple distinction of law. The objective right is the standard that establishes the order, the specific rule that expresses in an abstract mind the content of what is due to each one. The subjective right is the power that attaches to each individual concerning something that is ours (not a law, a norm). It's like a license for our will so that what is due to each is respected. Both of these two rights are complementary to each other.

The Right to Understand and Manage

It coincides with a social unit, which is the way the community determines to regulate relations with individuals and between individuals and the whole.

The Right Defined as the Sum of Relationships

We present a set of rights and obligations which form the social fabric. Legal relations are the interference of two or more political actors. The purchase contract, for example, is the essence of the legal concept. It is a legal relationship between two subjects with two different wills (one buys, another sells).

The Law as a Rule, Decision, and a Particular Order (Karl Schmitt)

The law is defined as a standard, which is defined as a collection of laws. From this perspective, men and their activity would be organic to the enforcement of that order. Understood as a decision, it implies an absence of a pre-existing rule (because otherwise, a decision is not required). This leads to a specific disorder that causes a conflict between different legal claims that will be in control. When viewing law as a mandate to establish a solution, it is the judge's case (the mandate of a judge). The law as a particular order represents the implicit management of a social order but created by the very nature of social forces. Thus, the right would be the functional ability of the different realities. Therefore, the law understood in this way will only come into operation when there is a disorder in social relationships.