Sources of Law Are Not Legal Norms

The chapter develops ideas that appeared first in Chap. 2 . Anglo-American authors have paid little attention to a subtle distinction that has important jurisprudential implications. It is the distinction between sources of law (e.g., statutes, precedents, customs) and the legal norms that can be derived from sources by means of interpretation. This chapter intends to state the “source-norm” distinction clearly and to give examples of jurisprudential insights that are missed, and mistakes that may be made if the distinction is not given its due.