The present article is devoted to the analysis of some features of the influential
theory of legal sentences elaborated by Manuel Atienza and Juan Ruiz
Manero. In particular, such an analysis deals with three main problems which
are present in Atienza’s and Ruiz Manero’s rational reconstruction of regulative
norms: i) the strongly Platonist conception of the logic of norms which they
seemingly presuppose; ii) the controversial notions of “openness” and “closure”
of normative conditionals; iii) and the contradictoriness of some of their background
assumptions regarding the rules/principles dichotomy.