SECUESTRO DEL LENGUAJE JURÍDICO Y DE LA LEGALIDAD. LA SEGURIDAD JURÍDICA.

Abstract

When discussing the search for individual initiatives for an improvement of coexistence (workshop promoted by the Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law, 2006), we must stress that the quest is both timely and urgent. The entire issue of a multicultural society and globalisation having an equal effect on public institutions (like the property registration system, as an instrument of personal legal certainty in regard to immovable property and real rights) is left to time. There is also a pathology and phenomenology of various kinds -ideological, educational, bureaucratic/administrative, political, etc.- but, from a jus-philosophical view or stance, there are two particular aspects in attendance, in addition to the description of the situation: First the kidnapping of legal language, in social operationality (the exact opposite of Orteguian clarity), which sometimes takes refuge in «alternatives» to the law. And, second, deviations from the principie of legality -applicable to personal conduct, where such deviations wear away at human dignity- and to power structures -democratic and otherwise- although they are more serious when appearing in the latter. The «nomination of language», or its «kidnapping» in legislation, particularly by those who detect social power, takes us back to an anachronistic nominalism. Because words have a meaning, even a historie meaning, that makes the «feeling» vividness of the law sharper. And at the same time, it facilitates our comprehension of «the neighbour», «the other», «the fellow man», «the third party», between his liberty and mine. The erosión of the principie of legality, which is immersed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, slides us towards legal relativism, which eventually reduces initiatives for an improvement of coexistence, and even places coexistence in danger.