Abstract

The essay is founded on the combination of three distinct criteria: one, the distinction between laws that are addressed to individuals and discipline their behaviour and laws that concern themselves with events or states of affairs; two, the distinction between laws that discipline types of things and laws that discipline actual cases (whether they correspond to a type already provided for by laws or are construed as singular cases); and three, the distinction between innovative laws in the legislative system and laws that are merely executive. This criss-cross of criteria (and of any other subordinate criteria falling under a more general criterion) determines a typology of "ad hoc" laws, in some cases constitutional and in others not.