ABSTRACT
Ifconfronted with the question what constitutes the law, not only laymen but probably even the majority of professional lawyers would refer to express regulations and - depending on the legal culture in question - perhaps to court decisions, giving thus expression to their spontaneous positivism. However, in my brief examination of the traditional legal positivism, I have pointed to the cul-de-sacs to which such a uni-Ievel conception of law leads. These can only be avoided if we acknowledge that the law as a legal order is not exhausted by its visible, discursively formulated surface: 'mature' modern law does not consist merely of regulations that can be read in the collections of statutes or court decisions to be found in law reports. It also includes deeper layers, which both create preconditions for and impose limitations on the material at the surface level. I call these sub-surface levels the legal culture and the deep structure of the law. The multi-Iayerednature of 'mature' modern law is the key to the solution that this type of law can offer to the problem of its limits and criteria of legitimacy.
