Robert Alexy (born 9 September 1945 in Oldenburg,

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

) is a

jurist A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyzes and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal education in law (a law degree) and often a Lawyer, legal prac ...

and a

legal philosopher Jurisprudence, also known as theory of law or philosophy of law, is the examination in a general perspective of what law is and what it ought to be. It investigates issues such as the definition of law; legal validity; legal norms and values ...

. Alexy studied

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the ar ...

and

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

at the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen (, commonly referred to as Georgia Augusta), is a Public university, public research university in the city of Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1734 ...

. He received his J.D. in 1976 with the dissertation ''A Theory of Legal Argumentation'', and he achieved his

Habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in Germany, France, Italy, Poland and some other European and non-English-speaking countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excelle ...

in 1984 with a ''Theory of Constitutional Rights''. He is a professor at the

University of Kiel Kiel University, officially the Christian Albrecht University of Kiel, (, abbreviated CAU, known informally as Christiana Albertina) is a public research university in the city of Kiel, Germany. It was founded in 1665 as the ''Academia Holsator ...

and in 2002 he was appointed to the Academy of Sciences and Humanities at the University of Göttingen. In 2010 he was awarded the

Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (, or , BVO) is the highest state decoration, federal decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany. It may be awarded for any field of endeavor. It was created by the first List of president ...

. Since 2008 the Universities of

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, Tucumán,

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, National University of San Marcos in Lima,

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, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte, Chapecó, Rio de Janeiro and

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awarded him the honorary doctorate degree.

Natural law theory

Alexy's

definition A definition is a statement of the meaning of a term (a word, phrase, or other set of symbols). Definitions can be classified into two large categories: intensional definitions (which try to give the sense of a term), and extensional definitio ...

looks like a mix of Kelsen's normativism (which was an influential version of

legal positivism In jurisprudence (also known as legal philosophy), legal positivism is the theory that the existence of the law and its content depend on social facts, such as acts of legislation, judicial decisions, and customs, rather than on morality. This con ...

) and Radbruch's

legal naturalism Legal naturalism is a term coined by Olufemi Taiwo to describe a current in the social philosophy of Karl Marx which can be interpreted as one of natural law. Taiwo considered it the manifestation of Natural Law in a dialectical materialist cont ...

(Alexy, 2002), but Alexy's theory of argumentation (Alexy, 1983) puts him very close to legal interpretivism. In ''The Argument From Injustice'', Alexy defends Radbruch's formula that injust or evil laws only lose their legal validity when they deliberately disavow justice and equality. He formulated law's relationship to morality on three theses: * The thesis of incorporation; each legal system contains principles. * The moral thesis; law must be related to a common moral. * The correctness thesis; law must be related to a just moral. At the heart of his theory is the claim to correctness: Law must necessarily claim to be correct, no matter how corrupt, lest it be self-contradictory and fundamentally illogical. As law coerces behaviour and gives individuals decisive reasons for acting, the correctness it claims must also be moral.

Publications

*''Theorie der juristischen Argumentation. Die Theorie des rationalen Diskurses als Theorie der juristischen Begründung'' (Suhrkamp, 1983; first edition 1978) **Translated by

Neil MacCormick Sir Donald Neil MacCormick (27 May 1941 – 5 April 2009) was a Scottish legal philosopher and politician. He was Regius Professor of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations at the University of Edinburgh from 1972 until 2008. He was a ...

as ''A Theory of Legal Argumentation: The Theory of Rational Discourse as Theory of Legal Justification'' (Clarendon, 1989) *''Theorie der Grundrechte'' (Suhrkamp, 1985; second edition 1994) **Translated by Julian Rivers as ''A Theory of Constitutional Rights'' (Oxford University Press, 2002) *''Mauerschützen'' (Vandenhoeck + Ruprecht, 1993) *''Recht, Vernunft, Diskurs'' (Suhrkamp, 1995) *''Der Beschluß des Bundesverfassungsgerichts zu den Tötungen an der innerdeutschen Grenze vom 24. Oktober 1996'' (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997) *''Begriff und Geltung des Rechts'' (Karl Alber, 1992) **Translated by Stanley Paulson and Bonnie Litschewski Paulson as ''The Argument from Injustice: A Reply to Legal Positivism'' (Oxford University Press, 2002) *''Elemente einer juristischen Begründungslehre'', co-edited with Hans-Joachim Koch, Lothar Kuhlen and Helmut Rüßmann (Nomos, 2003)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Alexy, Robert 1945 births Living people 20th-century German philosophers German philosophers of law Jurists from Lower Saxony Officers Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany German male writers People from Oldenburg (city) Members of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities

Natural law theory

Publications

Further reading

References