ABSTRACT
A law is a guide for action and it has to influence people's conduct. It is therefore necessary to reduce the realm of possibilities, of possible actions that could be performed by persons or parties that have to comply with a law. It is now clear how Bentham's theory of acts and circumstances is used to elaborate a legal frame that reduces the limits of the realm of possibilities. An act is one of the essential components that make it possible to think the idea of a law. Bentham follows his linguistic analysis when Malik wants to distinguish circumstances from cases since he resorts to two specific tools of his theory of fiction: phraseoplerosis and archetypation. It seems to me that the key point of Bentham's analysis roughly presented here is the reduction of intentionality to cognitive and volitional elements.
