IUS OR LEX ? THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPT OF LAW IN CONTINENTAL EUROPE

Abstract

The paper analyses the evolution of the concept of law in continental Europe in order to answer the research question - to what extent European law and the direction of its development is closer to the idea of ius or lex. The former obviously implies treating law in a stratified manner. Positive law is limited by an unchanging and not fully human-dependent order of values. The idea of lex, on the other hand, is embedded in the positivist primacy of statute law. The history of European culture has been associated with the mutual inhibition of these two macro-conceptions of law. Meanwhile, the federative legal order of the Union, which is emerging before our eyes, seems to refer exclusively to the idea of lex.