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Institutionalist Theories of Law

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Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy

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Legal institutionalism is a current of thought that is part of the broad “revolt against formalism” that took place in the late nineteenth century. This framing applies to the “classic” institutionalism associated with Santi Romano (1977, 1983) and Maurice Hauriou (1925, 1929, 1933), as well as to the more recent neoinstitutionalism developed by Ota Weinberger (1988, 1991) and Neil MacCormick (MacCormick 1973; MacCormick & Weinberger 1986). Institutionalism can, in this sense, be described as an attempt to solve the many problems deriving from a narrow conception of law – essentially conceived as the authoritative issuance of a “political superior” or of the state – and from legal science as a purely logical and systematic arrangement of legal norms and concepts or “institutes.”

In opposition to legal positivism – with its insistence on bracketing out any strong normative (moral or political) arguments and on discounting the social context in which legal norms operate –...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. “Magna Graecia” University of Catanzaro, Catanzaro, Italy

    Massimo La Torre

  2. University of Tallinn, Tallinn, Estonia

    Massimo La Torre

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  1. Massimo La Torre
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Correspondence to Massimo La Torre .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for International and Comparative Law, University of Baltimore School of Law, Baltimore, USA

    Mortimer Sellers

  2. Department of Legal Theory, International and European Law, University of Salzburg, Austria, Salzburg, Austria

    Stephan Kirste

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Philosophy, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Patricia Mindus Ph.D

  2. Charles III University, Madrid, Spain

    Triantafyllos Gkouvas

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La Torre, M. (2022). Institutionalist Theories of Law. In: Sellers, M., Kirste, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_53-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_53-1

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