On Some Objections to The Deductive Closure of Legal Systems

Abstract

I criticize an argument presented by Pablo Navarro and Jorge Rodríguez (2014) against the conception of legal systems as sets of statements closed under logical consequence. First, I show that the example on which they ground their argument incurs in a fallacy of equivocation. Then, I recognize that the authors are right about the fact that two different normative bases can react differently to changes, but I claim that that is not a decisive reason for choosing always the expressly enacted norms as the system’s basis, that the selection of the best basis should be guided by methodological considerations and that, to that purpose, it is necessary to consider the whole set of logical consequences as part of the system.