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  • 3 - Is There a Legal A Priori?

  • from Part I - Reinach and His Method
  • Edited by Marietta Auer, Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, Paul B. Miller, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, Henry E. Smith, Harvard Law School, Massachusetts, James Toomey, University of Iowa
  • Book:
    Reinach and the Foundations of Private Law
    Published online:
    20 July 2025
    Print publication:
    07 August 2025, pp 82-105
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  • Summary

    Reinach’s thesis that there is a legal a priori is as bold as it is interesting. It is bold because it excludes all sources of positive law and claims that certain legal propositions can be known independent of all actual legal systems. The thesis is especially interesting as it does not rely on natural law but rather on immediate insight into a priori legal propositions. Given the great variety of possible a priori propositions, the chapter focuses on necessary, essential, and nonpositive ones. All of them do not reveal a legal a priori, which casts the existence of a legal a priori into doubt. However, the phenomenon of self-evident propositions remains important. One just needs to analyse them differently with the help of nonpositive legal reasons.