Gustav Radbruch’s supposed turn against positivism: a matter of balancing

Abstract

This essay offers an investigation on the debated question of Radbruch’s supposed turn from positivism to non-positivism after World War II. It also intends to check whether this turn can be attributed to different balancing proposals among the main elements of Radbruch’s legal philosophy. To do that, three main questions must be answered: (i) whether Radbruch was a positivist before the war; (ii) what was his position after the war; and (iii) what was the relationship between the turn in his thought and the weight he gives to the two main dimensions (or principles) of his philosophy, namely “material correctness” (or “justice”) and “legal certainty”.