Progetto e diritto perfetto

In hisIl rovescio del diritto, Francesco Galgano, a master of civil law, played with the term “diritto” (law, right), pointing out that it was the only noun whose opposite does not exist. It is not an Italian peculiarity, because Recht, right, droit do not accept opposites as well and it is a serious matter. The law, in fact, as a complex of commands and norms whose disregard is punished, does not allow a “counter-right”. It is ontological substance: if the rules are serious, it is not given an opposite, negative substance. The right “is” in itself, and the rules can be respected or violated but the “non-norm” or the contrary of the norm cannot exist. It is true that law does not have the monopoly of rules (there are also more intimately strong rules, such as ethical and faith-based, and impassable rules, such as those of physics), yet it is true that it is the only one who has the power to make black out of white, unjust out of the just, false out of the true and when it does so, it contains within itself the contradiction and makes it its own. It is the right to be, when it wants, itself and the opposite of itself.