ABSTRACT
The law has two faces. On the one hand, it can be approached as a set of norms, as a legal order; this is the aspect with which typical lawyers in their spontaneous positivism equate the law. However, there is also 'another aspect to the law: it can also be examined as a set of specific social practices, as legal practices. These two aspects of the law are in constant interaction. Legal practices could not exist without legal norms. Legal norms define certain social practices as legal practices, as, for instance, law-making or adjudication (constitutive legal norms), and guide the conduct of the agents of these practices, like that of members of parliament or judges (regulative legal norms). But, by the same token, nor could the legal order exist without legal practices, which are responsible for its production and reproduction. When a term is needed which covers both of the law's aspects, legal system is a suitable candidate. In the usage I shall make of this term, no allusions to any system-theoretical position are intended.
