The Concept of Statutory Law in EU Perspective

The current meaning of the political concept of law is the result of a long and complex historical evolution. The underlying premise is that law does not always follow the development of democratic values. On the contrary, the political datum of the central role of law is constant in the system of the sources of the right of the state, as law is usually the most important source. Thus, our reflection must look for the political roots of the centrality of the law in contemporary legal systems. We must understand why the doctrines of constitutionalism have assigned to the centrality of the law a role and meaning of fundamental instrument for the democratic construction of the state’s legal system. In order to narrow the scope of our analysis, I would start from the liberal state of the nineteenth century. Therefore, I avoid confronting, for example, the study of the concept of law according to the historical-political doctrines of voluntarism (Volontarismo), or the study of the ethical-religious foundations of law–theories that we still find applied today in both totalitarian and theocratic systems.