The denunciation of Law as power and as discourse. Epistemic presuppositions of the value judgments of legal practices from the approach of critical theories of law.

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the main challenges arising from critical legal theories to the legal phenomenon, mainly in its institutional and authoritative dimension, taking into account the aspects repeatedly pointed out, namely: the discursive aspect of law and the political nature of the practices involved in this phenomenon. It thus seeks to investigate the epistemological presuppositions that make up the judgments that found these challenges. With this in mind, the paper collects contributions from some of the most relevant exponents of contemporary critical legal theories in order to then try to expose a paradox in which they would incur, based on the analysis and identification of the nature of the judgment that leads to the objection, challenge or complaint. In this way, it will be concluded that, a priori, there would seem to be an inconsistency between the paradigm of philosophical ethics that explains criticism as constitutive of its bases and the claim to objectivity that underlies this complaint.