Retroactive Validation: a Response to Céspedes
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52292/j.dsc.2026.5732Keywords:
Interpretative Traditions, Retroactive Validation, Legal Adjudication, Critical Morality, Law as Integrity, Autonomy of the LawAbstract
This article replies to Céspedes’s (2026) critique of Rosenkrantz’s conception of law, which he calls “law as tradition”. The central thesis holds that law is an autonomous normative domain and that the legal correctness of judicial decisions must be assessed by reference to the interpretive traditions of the community, without resorting to critical morality. Against the objection that this presupposes the completeness of law — which would make it impossible to resolve cases where institutional precedents are insufficient — the author develops the thesis of retrospective validation: a judicial decision is legally correct if it proves consistent with future interpretive traditions. The article also responds to charges of methodological circularity, asymmetric epistemic responsibilities, and incompatibility with jurisprudential change, illustrated through the cases Schiffrin, Brown v. Board of Education, and Carter v. Canada. Finally, it critiques Céspedes’s Dworkinian view: empowering judges to moralize the law is epistemologically unfounded, democratically illegitimate, and self-defeating for the values that give law its purpose — social cooperation, organic change, and civic friendship.
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