Legislating: Reasons and Values

Luka Martin Tomažič

Legislating: Reasons and Values

Keywords: legislation, values, argumentation, common good, John Finnis, David Hume

Abstract:
Legislative activity should be based on appropriate reasons for adopting individual normative legal acts. In this way, the legislator avoids arbitrariness and ensures regulatory efficiency. Reasons support decisions and provide them with logical acceptability. It is the use of arguments with practical purposes as they usually appear in everyday language and texts. This article asserts that mere reasons for adopting individual legislative solutions are insufficient when they are based on facts. The values they reflect are essential. Since the law is always imperfectly theorized, due to, among other things, the inevitable semantic openness and the very nature of language, it is values that give preference to one legislative approach over another.

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