Abstract

My Ph.D. thesis œImpossibilità nel diritto€ [Impossibility in the Legal Domain] is devoted to the systematic analyses of what are called, at least prima facie, €œlegal impossibilities. My dissertation defines and isolates an area of studies - impossibility in the law - that has never been put organically together. In my work I present some case studies of normative impossibilities and discuss them from a philosophical point of view: impossible laws, impossible norms in a prescriptive theory of norms (ch. 2), conflicting norms and legal gaps (metanormative impossibility - ch. 3), impossible obligations (ch. 4), impossible crimes (ch. 5), impossible legal proofs (ch. 6). I organize my research along the distinction -€“ introduced in ch. 1 -€“ between impossibility of norms (i.e. impossible norms and impossible normative acts) and impossibility from norms (i.e. impossibility due to a norm or a set of norms); the distinction between the impossibility of a norm conceived as a single entity and the impossibility of a norm conceived as part of a legal system; and the distinction of two uses of impossibilities in general, as impossibility can be both the object of a modal qualification and a modality itself. I propose four new contributions to the study of impossibility in the legal domain (ch. 7). Firstly, I reconstruct two different functions of the impossibility in the legal domain (exculpatory and invalidating); secondly, I put forward a triadic model for describing impossibility in the legal domain (in which, roughly, a set of sources of impossibilities is qualified by a function for the assumption of impossibility in the actual and concrete legal system); thirdly, I define and investigate the relationship of creation, assumption and presupposition between impossibility and a legal system; fourthly, I critically list and review all the different kinds of things that are called €˜impossibilities€™ inside a legal system, showing how sometimes the use of the concept of impossibility is not carefully justified. As an appendix (ch. 8), I outline a logic for impossibilities in the legal domain that allows to investigate the phenomena discussed in the work by breaking down the equivalence between being impossible (in the legal domain) and being logically contradictory.