Shapiro’s Planning Theory of Law

Abstract

This text is a presentation of the main characteristics of the Planning Theory of Law developed by Scott J. Shapiro in the work Legality, considering convergences and divergences before the classic models of legal positivism, developed by Kelsen, Hart and Bobbio. The question concerns the broad discussion, in the field of philosophy of law, regarding the identification of the theory with greater fidelity in the description of the legal phenomenon and, notably, with greater normative potential, especially considering the function of law. In this problematic context, the hypothesis under discussion is to assess whether Shapiro's proposition presents theoretical advances on the classic developments of legal positivism, attributed to the aforementioned authors. In conclusion, theoretical aspects were pointed out to indicate the classification of Shapiro's theory as a post-positivist proposition, with a culturalist nature, notably by presenting points of connection between law and morality (both seen as social facts), rather than the pretense of framing it as a form of non-formalist exclusive legal positivism, recommending future investigations about this argument. As for the methodology, it is emphasized that in the investigation stage we used the inductive method, in the data processing phase we used the cartesian method and the final text was composed on the basis of deductive logics. In the various stages of the research we used the techniques of the referent, the category, the operational concept and literature survey.