The debate between Eugenio Bulygin and Robert Alexy on the claim to correctness of law: lights and shadows

GAIDO, PAULA

Erlangen

Jornada; Recht, Vernunft, Diskurs; 2023

Friedriech Alexander Universität

The debate between Robert Alexy and Eugenio Bulygin on the claim to correctness of law is a way to reflect on the kind of relationship between law and morality. What is at stake is whether the understanding of a moral value is relevant to the understanding of law. The thesis of the claim to correctness of law is one of the paths taken by Alexy to argue why he considers this to be the case. In developing this thesis he seeks to show one of the senses in which law is intrinsically bound to a moral value. Relatedly, he wants to stress that giving an account of the intrinsic relationship between law and morality is a major task of legal theory and philosophy. Eugenio Bulygin maintains the opposite thesis. He considers the moral value of law to be contextual and contingent. This makes the contextual and contingent relationship between law and morality beyond the scope of legal theory and philosophy. For almost three decades Bulygin analyzed and criticized some of the arguments developed by Alexy to support the thesis of the claim to correctness. Alexy introduced some nuances in his arguments, but fundamentally persisted in them, and tried to show why Bulygin's criticisms missed the mark. The question that guides my work is about the value of this kind of exchange in the progress of ideas when authors starts from antagonistic meta-theoretical presuppositions and does not explicitly dvelve into its discussion.