Analytical Legal Philosophy

Abstract

This chapter examines the analytical legal philosophy’s birth, development, and crisis from the early 1950s. After identifying this legal philosophical tradition’s main features, the connection between analytical legal philosophy and legal positivism is explored. This link is particularly close if one looks at the legal analytical philosophy from a continental European legal-philosophical perspective. The decline of analytical philosophy is primarily linked to the crisis of legal positivism and, concerning this last point, the debate that has developed in continental Europe since the mid-1970s is strongly influenced by the Anglo-American debate, even if it does present original insights. The central issue concerns the neutrality of legal knowledge, which is a crucial assumption of both analytical legal philosophy and legal positivism. The interpretive turn in contemporary legal philosophy has cast doubt on the possibility of describing law irrespective of ideological assumptions and moral evaluations.