Legal Certainty

Abstract

The essay analyses the concept of legal certainty, questioning the widespread assumption that legal certainty is a matter of predictability. Certainty, the essay argues, is not a matter of sheer predictability of the outcomes of judicial decisions, but rather a matter of correct individuation of the legal consequences of a given case. With this clarification in mind, the essay then goes on with a tentative scrutiny of the place of legal certainty in the theory and practice of the Constitutional state.