From legal dogmatics to legal science

Abstract

This work offers a brief reflection on legal dogmatics based on the concepts discussed by Nicolás Salvi in his recent book “La condición multiparadigmática del derecho”. The book contributes—at least—two important elements for rethinking academic-legal work in our law faculties. First, the deliberate exclusion of dogmatics from the range of possible disciplinary matrices of legal science constitutes a challenge to the scientific status of much of the teaching and research content developed in our universities. Indeed, the predominance of doctrine as the main activity of legal scholars is often characterized by an undifferentiated combination of analytical and normative language. This undermines the scientific character of dogmatics, which relies on epistemological elements from competing disciplinary frameworks. Second, Salvi’s approach to the interpretivist matrix invites us to question the widespread adoption of the interpretivist model as a provider of new tools for the analytical-normative language used by dogmatic scholars.