El ideal de las acciones basadas en normas jurídicas

This article is based on the assumption that every legal system attempts to regulate behaviour through a set of norms. In the first part, it is argued that norms constitute a specific kind of basis for practical reasoning, i. e. a universal, conditional reason. Accordingly, a norm-based reasoning has always subsumptive character. In this regard, I have tried to show that norm-based reasoning does not require that the set of valid legal norms be a finite set of non-malleable or excluding contents. Instead, it requires that valid legal norms be a delimited set of contents. To be precise, a set delimited by a further set of (including-excluding) criteria. In the second part, I have tried to show that taking into account the behavior that satisfies a norm we can distinguish between different kinds of norms. From this perspective, I have emphasized that there are norms which are completely satisfied by the addressee when she produces an external state of affaires. These norms can be satisfied even if their existence or content is not taken in consideration as a motivating reason for action. Besides, there are norms whose satisfaction requires from the addressee that she accepts the existence or the content of the norm as a reason. These norms require for their satisfaction a specific kind of reasoning but not a specific kind of external result. Every norm aims to be a justifying reason that allows the evaluation of a state of affaires, but the second kind of norms only has sense if interpreted as a kind of motivating reason for action as well.