Burazin on Legal Systems as Artifacts

Luka Burazin, University of Zagreb, Faculty of Law, has published Practical Concepts of Law as Artifact Kind in volume 3/4 of Pravni vjesnik (2015). Here is the abstract.

It is often said that, in contrast to natural kinds, artifacts are mind-dependent, meaning that they somehow depend on either human beliefs or activities. In addition, some specifically claim that this mind-dependency of artifacts means that they are concept-dependent, i.e., that they are constituted by the concepts and intentions of humans (artifact authors or creators) and that the latter, in turn, determine what features are relevant for an artifact to be a member of a certain artifact kind. #e paper therefore inquires into what these constitutive concepts are and what role they play. It also tries to explain the relationship between these concepts and the ‘theoretical’ ones. Since the paper’s main thesis is that law as such is an artifact or, more precisely, that legal systems are artifacts, it considers the said issue specifically in relation to the jurisprudential views on the ontological character of law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.