ABSTRACT
The legitimacy of a democratic political system depends upon the fiction of the people being a political agent with one will which justifies positive political institutions and provides legal norms with general validity. Legal positivism, like any other positivist theory, ultimately is a metaphysical project which defines the normative framework for law and the conditions of law's legitimacy. While the problems of validity and effectiveness remain predominantly a 'legal' issue of coherence, enforcement and obedience, the broader problem of the legitimacy of law becomes a political issue of the democratic legislation and protection of human rights and freedoms. Legitimacy finds itself ultimately outside the circular juridification of legality and is a matter of practical reason, political rationality and morality. In modern legal positivism, the original legitimation fictions of legal positivism have been replaced by the paradigmatic inconsistency and moralism about legitimacy, which builds on liberal democratic foundations.
