Reflections of a Tightrope Walker

Abstract

By way of a reply to the critical commentaries of Juan Pablo Alonso and Gabriela Scataglini, Omar Darío Heffes, Vitoria Iturralde, Santiago Legarre, Isabel Lifante-Vidal, Diego Luna, and Jorge Rodríguez, the paper purports to provide a perhaps clearer account of the reasons for accepting analytic non-cognitivism as a sound theory of legal interpretation, coping with problems which range from the defense of its own conceptual apparatus (focusing on the key notion of textual interpretation) to the relations with ethical pluralism, ethical relativism, egologic realism, constructivist non-cognitivism, linguistic conventionalism, radical scepticism, moderate non-cognitivism, and pragmatic non-cognitivism.