Abstract

Viola’s reflection is structured around what he describes as the three “rebirthsµ of natural law. The belief erroneously held by legal positivists is that natural and positive law constitute a binary alternative: while natural law and justice are necessarily connected, positive law is only accidentally connected to justice. Contrary to this belief, Viola demonstrates that positive law is natural and natural law is positive. Viola shows how the processes of decodification, constitutionalisation, and internationalisation of law, together with the affirmation of international human rights, brought about a radical transformation whereby law is properly understood as a practice, rather than a theory. The recent theoretical reflection on legal interpretation and argumentation uncovered the limits of both the legal positivist and natural law paradigms. As Viola’s fine theorisation illustrates, if we acknowledge that between scientific rationality and irrationality there is a large space where the reasonable, probable, and fair loom large, then the natural law tradition has something to say to defend the very value of legal certainty: a value so dear to legal positivists