Defining law: the concept of force and its legitimacy. Some considerations on Frederik Schauer's book "The Force of Law"

The relation between force and law is very complicated one. However, if we want to understand what a rule is, what it can do, and how it does, we have to recognize the relevance of the coercive dimension; this is not a necessary character of every rule, but remains the most typical reason that explains why people accord their behaviors to the prescriptions of the rules. Dealing with force, in any case, is not an easy matter: the semantic field to which the term force belongs is very huge and with it we can cover a lot of different situations. For that reason, when we put together law and force, we immediately need to find a third element through which th is relationship could be regulated. The force of law leads us to recognize that the acts of force we can accept are the ones that have been defined by the legitimate principle. The coercive dimension is comprehensible just for its legitimacy, and that implies an idea of justice. (La relazione tra forza e diritto è molto complessa. Tuttavia, sper comprendere che cosa sia una norma giuridica occorre riconoscere l'importanza della dimensione coercitiva. il campo semantico del termine ‘forza’ è molto ampio e encessita, se riferito al diritto, di essere qualificato in termini di legittimità. in altri termini, la dimensione coercitiva del diritto è comprensibile solo alla luce del concetto di legittimità e implica un'idea di giustizia).