Trevor N. Wedman shows that sovereignty, subjectivity and normativity, or the sovereign, the subject and the (legal) norm are three wholly interdependent concepts: the meaning of each of these concepts entails the other two. The title Inverting the Norm refers to an attempt at switching our perspective on legal normativity from top-down to bottom-up. The law is our reflected, and thus sovereign, form of common practice.
Trevor N. Wedman seeks to understand the key assumptions underlying modern legal theory. Going back to Hobbes, but also making use of the developments in the theory of action and language philosophy over the past century, he breaks down the static conception of the state into one dependent on the actions and reflections of individuals, i.e., its citizens. He develops a social ontological theory of the law, in which the law is not taken as a mere given, but as an institutional fact. He criticizes both the Kelsenian conception of the Basic Norm and the Hartian notion of the Rule of Recognition as failing to account for the agency of individuals. The author turns to the work of one of Kelsen's contemporaries, Felix Somlo, in order to develop an alternative conception of the law that operates not from the top-down, but from the bottom-up. In this way, the law itself comes into focus as that which results from the reasoned jurisprudential reflection on the reality of meanings and actions.
Survey of contents
Introduction
1. A Man At Rest
2. Regarding 2.061
3. Empiricism Or Positivism
4. Radical Legal Positivism
Chapter I Logic Of Norms I1. A Normative State Of Affairs
2. Is And Ought
3. Laws, Scientific And Legal
4. Beyond Prescriptions
5. The Normative Relation
6. Power In Reason
7. Fact And Fiction
8. Summary – The Law As Common Ground
Chapter II A Positive Conception Of The State1. Commands Of The Sovereign
2. Leviathan, Not Rex
3. Political Agency
4. The Absolute State
5. Volonté Générale And The Legal Concept Of The Political
6. The Unity Of The State
Chapter III Deus Sive Civitas1. Jurisprudence And Theology
2. State As Hypostasis
3. The Problem Of Many, Of No Gods
4. »Absolute Positivism«
5. Value Nihilism
6. Kelsen's Golden Calf
7. Spunk
8. The Tyranny Of Necessity
9. A First Convention
10. The Social Construction Of The State
Chapter IV Legal Norms As Plurale Tantum1. Validity And The Collective
2. Modernity And The Law
3. Objectivity And Its Propositional Content
4. Subjectivity And Interpretation
5. The Structure Of Law
6. The Starting Position
7. The Flux Of Sovereignty
8. Plurale Tantum
9. The Logical Sentence
10. Absolute Validity
Chapter V Facts And Matters Of Fact (Logic Of Norms)1. Naturalism And Realism
2. »Hard Facts Make Bad Law«
3. The Critique Of Pure, Not Practical, Reason
4. Objectivity In The Law
5. Knowing The Law
6. The Mode Of Expression
Conclusion – Law As Constitution
