Dogmatica in Leon Petrażycki : giusrealismo e principio di legalità

The purpose of this article is to clarify Petrażycki’s distinction between on the one hand the general (psycho-sociological) theory of law and descriptive legal science and, on the other, legal dogmatics. The author first discusses some general statements of Petrażycki’s with regard to the purpose of legal dogmatics, then examines Petrażycki’s discussion of the concept of ‘statute’ for the general (psycho-sociological) theory of law, on one hand, and for the (general theory of) legal dog-matics on the other. The better to highlight Petrażycki’s theoretical tenets, Fittipaldi compares Petrażycki’s concept of ‘statute’ with Kelsen’s, thus showing that Petraży-cki’s distinction between descriptive legal science and legal dogmatics has remark-able theoretical advantages compared to Kelsen’s distinction between sociology of law and normative jurisprudence. He also shows, however, that Petrażycki’s ap-proach needs to be completed with Kelsen’s concept of ‘Grundnorm’. According to Fittipaldi, the general (psycho-sociological) theory of law and legal dogmatics both need their own concept of ‘Grundnorm’.