Are Legal Sentences Normative Propositions?

The cognition of the law of a certain community requires distinguishing between true and false legal statements. Such statements are a type of normative statements, and normative statements describe that certain actions are obligatory (forbidden) or permitted. In their classical book on normative systems, ALCHOURRON and BULYGIN offer the most elaborated analysis of the nature of legal statements. Basically, they claim that legal statements are disguised normative propositions (that is, propositions that refer to the existence of legal norms) and their reductionism is grounded on a specific conception of law and legal theory: legal positivism. In this paper, I claim not only that ALCHOURRON and BULYGIN actually endorsed different views about legal statements and normative propositions but also that a legal positivist is not committed to subscribe the classical analysis offered by them.