Principia Iuris between normativity and Power: about the Constitutional Rule of Law State in the Theory of Luigi Ferrajoli

PRETEROSSI advances what in his opinion are both the main merits and the main risks too of the thesis on the relations between law and power as sustained by FERRAJOLI in Principia Iuris. Specifically, the attempt to deconstruct and overcome the traditional dichotomy formal rationality/substantive rationality with a complex notion of validity and the understanding of the relations between law and power in our constitutional democracies are considered to be the most powerful though slippery points of the theory. In PRETEROSSI's opinion, the tension between rationality and will should always and unavoidably be present at the very core of any society, far more, at the very core of law, whatever its relations with politics might be (politics is internal to law and the constituent act is both factual and normative). Consequently, legal theory must be prevented against falling into any sort of disguising or concealing reconstruction of that unavoidable tension.