On the origins of Rule of Law and the meta-physics of institutions
| Autor | Bruno Meneses Lorenzetto |
| Ocupação do Autor | Assistant Professor of Theory of Law, Pontifical Catholic University of Parana, Brazil |
| Páginas | 740-750 |
740 • XXVI World Congress of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy
On the origins of Rule of Law and
the meta-physics of institutions
Bruno Meneses Lorenzeo1
Abstract: The question concerning the origins or the beginning of the concepts
is a philosophical problem that is located at the core of some of the most impor-
tant reections in our current time. In specic, the question about the origins
of the state – the Rule of Law – is taken as the object of this reection. It´s
known that there is a wide range of answers given to it, mainly by the classical
perspective of distinct authors that addressed the issue, in an eort to create
theories that could shape an outlook to the social community and explain some
important themes which structure the identity of a society, as such, the origins
of sovereignty, the legitimacy of the representatives, the declarations of rights
and the functioning of the institutions.
The aim of the present paper is to show the mechanisms that work in
the “underground” of these concepts or, how does the institutions use a meta-
physical production of self-legitimating acts. Problems that can be seen in the
“we” of term “We the people”, in the following terms: who is the “we” that
precedes the “We the people”, or constitutes the “people”? The state is thought
as being “always there”, even before the “we”? One can say that our forebears
created the state but, when? And, where did came the power that legitimated
our forebears?
On the other hand, from where is originated the legitimacy of the Law?
How to enforce the law, remembering that the Law is an authorized and justi-
ed force, a force that justies itself. And, furthermore, the operation that cre-
ates the Law tend to be a coup de force, that no prior foundation could, by deni-
tion, guarantee, ensure or contradict.
In sum, the search for the origins of the Rule of Law implies in puing
in evidence the aporias that constitutes both the Law and Politics and, as a con-
sequence, the uses that Law makes of politics to legitimate itself, and vice versa.
Considering that both institutions bear a meta-physical structure of legitima-
tion.
Keywords: Rule of Law. Institutions. Politics.
1
Assistant Professor of eory of Law, Pontical Catholic University of Parana, Brazil.
Visiting Research Scholar, Columbia University, New York, 2013.
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