The aporia of kelsen's concept of a "norm". Three levels of interpretation of the meaning of a legal norm [L'aporia del concetto kelseniano di "norma". Tre livelli di interpretazione del senso d'una norma giuridica]

The Aporia of Kelsen’s Concept of a “Norm”. Three Levels of Interpretation of the Meaning of a Legal Norm Abstract: Luigi Ferrajoli, in his work La logica del diritto. Dieci aporie nell’opera di Hans Kelsen (2016), pointed out ten aporias in Hans Kelsen’s pure theory of law. This paper deals with the fifth aporia, that is the of Kelsen’s concept of a “norm”. The paper firstly distinguishes two different questions on the concept of a norm underlying the pure theory of law: the question “What is a norm?”, and the question “What has the meaning of a norm within a legal system?”; it secondly distinguishes three different levels of interpretation of a norm: (i) interpretation of the semantic meaning of norm sentences, (ii) interpretation of the subjective intrinsic pragmatic meaning of the norm creating act; (iii) interpretation of the extrinsic objective normative meaning of the norm creating act; it thirdly suggests that the existence of a norm is the ideal (ideel) existence of a meaning, not the empirical existence of an act