This profound and scholarly treatise develops a critical version of legal positivism as the basis for modern legal scholarship. Departing from the formalism of Hart and Kelsen and blending the European tradition of Weber, Habermas and Foucault with the Anglo-American contributions of Dworkin and MacCormick, Tuori presents the normative and practical faces of law as a multilayered phenomenon within which there is an important role for critical legal dogmatics in furthering law's self-understanding and coherence. Its themes also resonate with importance for the development of the European legal system.