María Beatriz Arriagada (Universidad Diego Portales - Facultad de Derecho) has posted Do Legal Positions Exist? (Singapore Journal of Legal Studies, Sep 2024, pp 377–395) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Assuming that the vocabulary of the so-called “legal positions” is, under certain circumstances, interchangeable with the normative vocabulary, this work reformulates the question of whether legal positions exist as the question of whether they are ontologically reducible to (dismissible and replaceable by) legal norms. Since there is no doubt that the so-called “legal positions” are part and parcel of the reality that is assumed as existent in specialized legal discourses, the question raised by this work is situated at the level of meta-legal theory. In Parts II and III two different answers to this question are reconstructed: the affirmative answer that seems to be dominant in legal theory, and the negative answer elaborated by Ross. In Part IV both answers previously reconstructed are translated into the language of reduction, where the question of whether legal positions exist is reformulated again, this time as the question of whether legal theory must consider them to exist or not. Building on the distinction between different types of reduction, the ultimate goal is to distil, refine or shape the dominant discourse of legal theory according to which legal positions must be accepted as existent.