Normative force

pp. 481-497

in: Humberto Ávila, Certainty in law, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

The legal efficacy of the legal certainty principle involves its normative force, in the sense of how it is positioned with regard to other norms. Thus the legal certainty principle is a norm with sui generis efficacy, unlike that of all other principles, a sort of "condition norm" or 'structure norm", in the sense that unless it is minimally effective no other norms can have minimal efficacy. It is an "intermediation principle", establishing functional conditions for the principles and rules that constitute the legal order.