Abstract

ABSTRACT The current article is inserted in the domain of legal theory, having as objective to discuss the concept and the centrality of authority in contemporaneous debate around legal positivism, just as offer an alternative position, sustained by Pashukanis and based on legal subject (a nearly forgotten category, overshadowed by the horizon of legal norm and its authority). The study proceeds with a comparative analysis of the notion of authority in legal positivism’s classical authors (Austin, Kelsen e Hart), pointing out how this perspective is still hegemonic in contemporaneous legal thinking, even in the contemporaneous versions of legal positivism. The next step is the contrast of authority-based conception with Evgeni Pashukanis’ conception, whose core is legal subjectivity. By comparing the main theoretical propositions with the Pashukanian perspective of legal form, it is noted that authority is a void concept, unable to define the historical specificity of law. Understood as state repressive power, as socially recognized power or as (self proclaimed) legitimate reason to act, authority can not provide legal phenomenon’s conceptual boundaries.