The closure of the systems of legal norms of competence

Abstract

This work has two aims. Its first aim is to reject the widespread thesis that the legal normative systems determining the powers of public authorities are closed because they contain a rule stating that constituted authorities cannot execute normative acts if they have not been expressly authorised to do so. In other words, this rule states that any person whose normative status is not liable to the powers of a constituted authority by the constituent authority enjoys immunity from said authority. The second aim of the paper is to defend the (alternative) thesis according to which these systems are closed because they contain a residual closure rule that says that any person whose normative status has not been explicitly exempted from the competence of a constituted authority by an immunity established by the constituent authority is liable to its constituted authority. In pursuing these two goals, the author uses analytic tools developed to show that systems of regulative legal norms are closed if they contain a residual closure rule that says that anything that is not prohibited is permitted.