ABSTRACT
The analysis of law, which reveals the dynamic character of this normative system and the function of the basic norm, also exposes a further peculiarity of law: Law regulates its own creation inasmuch as one legal norm determines the way in which another norm is created, and also, to some extent, the contents of that norm. Since a legal norm is valid because it is created in a way determined by another legal norm, the latter is the reason of validity of the former. The relation between the norm regulating the creation of another norm and this other norm may be presented as a relationship of super- and sub-ordination, which is a spatial figure of speech. The norm determining the creation of another norm is the superior, the norm created according to this regulation, the inferior norm. The legal order, especially the legal order the personification of which is the State, is therefore not a system of norms coordinated to each other, standing, so to speak, side by side on the same level, but a hierarchy of different levels of norms. The unity of these norms is constituted by the fact that the creation of one norm — the lower one — is determined by another — the higher — the creation of which is determined by a still higher norm, and that this regressus is terminated by a highest, the basic norm which, being the supreme reason of validity of the whole legal order, constitutes its unity.
