The Irreducibility of Permissions in Legal Reasoning

许可规范在逻辑学家和法律学者中并不十分流行，因为对于是否需要一个与义务概念截然不同的许可概念，人们没有达成一致意见。许多人认为，宽容的规范没有独立的地位，可以从禁令中派生出来；因此，他们只承认一种规范，即强制性规范，即确立义务或禁令的规范。将宽容规范视为不重要而予以拒绝的倾向，至少在一定程度上根植于将规范理解为以某种方式行事的处方或指示。许可规范和强制规范之间的区别非常明显：强制规范排除某些行为，因此与许可规范不相容。从广义上讲，容许性规范也是规定性的，也就是说，非描述性的，尽管它们不像强制性规范那样规定一个行为。宽容规范在规范上是重要的；它们通过决定受这一制度管制的行为的规范地位，对法律制度的结构作出贡献，尽管在很大程度上如此。目前的工作是研究许可的类型和许可规范在法律体系中所起的作用。该项目试图挑战以下五个理解（和误解）许可和许可规范的主要观点：消极（弱）和积极（强）许可之间的区别；明确许可、隐含许可和默示许可之间的区别；许可和义务的可解释性；许可：通过许可对义务的预设；以及拒绝许可的不同方式。挑战这五个观点以及提出的反对意见，将为宽容规范的法律意义提供一幅新颖而更准确的图景。这尤其涉及到关注禁止和认为许可寄生于禁止之上，使对许可的理解处于不太令人满意的状态。许可不能简化为禁止，许可规范是法律制度中一种重要而独立的规范。尽管在逻辑学家和法律理论家中，通常将许可定义为没有禁止。不清楚是否在系统S中没有允许p的规范，人们如何知道某事是被允许的，也就是说，有做p的许可。许可的消歧义将允许证明许可不应该被简化为仅仅是禁止的缺失。这可以通过强调宽容规范在理解什么是允许的和什么是禁止的范围的限制方面的有用性来实现。反过来，这一想法将证明许可具有其自身的规范价值（对法律体系和个人而言），而不是沦为禁止。

Permissive norms have not been very popular among logicians and legal scholars because there is no agreement on the need for a notion of permission distinct from the notion of obligation. Many believe that permissive norms do not have an independent status and could be derived from prohibitions; therefore, they recognize only one type of norm, namely mandatory norms, that is, norms that establish obligations or prohibitions. The tendency to reject permissive norms as unimportant is at least in part rooted in the understanding of norms as prescriptions or instructions to behave in a certain way. The difference between permissive norms and mandatory norms is very clear: A mandatory norm excludes some actions and thus is incompatible with a permissive one. Permissive norms are also, in a broad sense, prescriptive, that is, nondescriptive, although they do not prescribe an action as mandatory norms do. Permissive norms are normatively significant; they contribute to the structure of the legal system by determining the normative status of actions regulated by this system, even though to a significant extent. The present work is a study of the types of permissions and the roles played by permissive norms in a legal system. The project seeks to challenge five major ideas of understanding (and misunderstanding) permissions and permissive norms as the following: a distinction between negative (weak) and positive (strong) permissions; a distinction between explicit, implicit, and tacit permissions; an interdefinability of permission and obligation; a presupposition of an obligation by a permission; and the different ways to negate a permission. Challenging these five ideas along with the proposed objections will provide a novel and more accurate picture of legal significance of permissive norms. This concerns especially what focusing on prohibition and considering of a permission as parasitic upon prohibition leaves the understanding of permission in a less satisfactory state. Permissions cannot be reduced to prohibitions and permissive norms are an important and independent kind of norm in legal systems. Although, among logicians and legal theorists, it is common to define a permission as an absence of prohibition. It is not clear if there is no norm permitting p in system S, how one can know that something is permitted, that is, there is a permission to do p. The disambiguation of permission will allow proving the thesis that permission should not be reducible to merely an absence of prohibition. This can be accomplished by stressing the usefulness of permissive norms in understanding the limits of the spheres of what is permitted and what is prohibited. This idea, in turn, will allow proving the thesis that a permission has its own normative value (for a legal system as well as for individuals) not reducing to prohibition.