Spaak argues that legal positivists need to consider the social thesis in light of an important distinction between two levels of legal thinking, namely, the level of the sources of law (existence) and the level of the interpretation and application of law (content), and that they have good reason to restrict the scope of the social thesis to the level of the sources of law. He argues that by restricting the scope of the social thesis in this way, inclusive legal positivists can avoid having to assume that moral judgements can be true in a non-relative way, that exclusive legal positivists can avoid having to say that judges are creating new law instead of applying pre-existing law, if and insofar as they invoke normative considerations in their interpretation and application of the law, and that both inclusive and exclusive legal positivists can avoid Dworkin’s theoretical disagreement objection.

Much has been said about legal positivism. Yet, given the lack of clarity as to what, exactly, it stands, or should stand, for, more is to be said, not only about what legal positivism is, or might be, and its different types but also about its different geographical traditions, central figures, fundamental tenets, meta-ethical underpinnings, if any, the problem of legal normativity considered within the framework of legal positivism, the value or disvalue of law positivistically conceived and of positivistic legal arrangements, and, of course, about the perceived problems of legal positivism, such as its alleged totalitarian implications. This is what this book does and this Introduction explains how. We attempt to provide a fuller and more adequate characterisation of legal positivism than just saying that legal positivists reject the view that there is a necessary connection between law and morality, and we identify certain important types of legal positivism. What is offered in this volume is a rather comprehensive and systematic discussion by experts in the field; this Introduction thus also illustrates the authors’ contributions to the various topics examined.