This paper identifies the main features of post-positivism, which is presented
as a sound alternative to the “positivism versus natural law” debate. Post-positivism
is constituted by a set of meta-theoretical and theoretical theses. Among
the former we can include the assertion that there can be no purely descriptive
theory of law, since jurisprudence must provide an answer to the problems of
justification that are likely to arise in legal practice, and the claim that legal theory
is able to vindicate a normative theory of legal argumentation. The theoretical
theses, on the other hand, are the claims that there is a legal obligation to decide
legal disputes in a morally correct way and that there are substantial limits to the
validity of a law.