Legal Validity and Soft Law

Description

This book features essays that investigate the nature of legal validity from the point of view of different traditions and disciplines. Validity is a fascinating and elusive characteristic of law that in itself deserves to be explored, but further investigation is made more acute and necessary by the production, nowadays, of soft law products of regulation, such as declarations, self-regulatory codes, and standardization norms. These types of rules may not exhibit the characteristics of formal law, and may lack full formal validity but yet may have a very real impact on people's lives. The essays focus on the structural properties of hard and soft legal phenomena and the basis of their validity. Some propose to redefine validity: to allow for multiple concepts instead of one and/or to allow for a gradual concept of validity. Others seek to analyze the new situation by linking it to familiar historical debates and well-established theories of law. In addition, coverage looks at the functions of validity itself. The discussion considers both international law as well as domestic law arrangements. What does it mean to say that something is valid? Should we discard validity as the determining aspect of law? If so, what does this mean for our concept of law? Should we differentiate between kinds of validity? Or, can we say that rules can be "more" or "less" valid? After reading this book, practitioners, scholars and students will have a nuanced understanding of these questions and more. Chapter 6 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com. Front Matter ....Pages i-viii Validity in Positive Law: A Mere Summary Concept (Dietmar von der Pfordten)....Pages 1-18 What Is Legal Validity? Lessons from Soft Law (Jaap Hage)....Pages 19-45 Concept and Validity of Law (Stephan Kirste)....Pages 47-73 Sources and Validity (Mathieu Carpentier)....Pages 75-97 Unlocking Legal Validity: Some Remarks on the Artificial Ontology of Law (Paolo Sandro)....Pages 99-123 What Is Legal Validity and Is It Important? Some Critical Remarks About the Legal Status of Soft Law (Anne Ruth Mackor)....Pages 125-144 A Fuller Understanding of Legal Validity and Soft Law (Bart van Klink, Oliver W. Lembcke)....Pages 145-164 Validity: The Reputation of Rules (Pauline Westerman)....Pages 165-182 A Short Note on the Validity of Rules Guiding Informal Markets (Yugank Goyal, Pauline Westerman)....Pages 183-192 Critical Remarks on Alf Ross’s Probabilistic Concept of Validity (Katarzyna Eliasz, Wojciech Załuski)....Pages 193-202 Sovereignty and Validity: On the Relation Between the Concepts and the Role of Acceptance (Antonia Waltermann)....Pages 203-220 Legal Validity, Soft Law, and International Human Rights Law (Mátyás Bódig)....Pages 221-242 Soft Law in Public International Law: A Pragmatic or a Principled Choice? Comparing the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement (Marcel M. T. A. Brus)....Pages 243-266