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What is of paramount importance for understanding the nature of legal validity and developing its adequate conception is to precisely separate the analysis of the intension of the concept of legal validity from the analysis of its extension. The point here is, therefore, on the one hand, to explain the meaning of the phrase "A norm of statutory law is valid" and, on the other hand, to determine the extension of the concept of valid law by indicating the methods that allow us to decide whether a given statutory norm is valid (in the juristic sense of this term). After having justified five specific objectives of the undertaken clarification, we discuss the problem of determining such a point of view that is methodologically appropriate for further analyses. The perspective chosen by us as being the most proper for jurisprudential analyses is the one referred to as a detached and axiologically impartial point of view. There still remains the last major methodological problem to be considered: What should we deem as the basic "unit" or "particle" of law, to which we can ascribe the attribute of validity? In response to this question, we justify why we refer the concept of validity to legal norms (rather than to legal provisions or lawmaking acts).

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-27688-0_6

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