The concept of law can be defined only as the reality tending toward the idea of law. - Gustav Radbruch

This view of a law and of its validity (we call it the positivistic theory) has rendered jurists and the people alike defenceless against arbitrary, cruel, or criminal laws, however extreme they might be. In the end, the positivistic theory equates law with power; there is law only where there is power.

It is the professional duty of the judge to validate the law’s claim to validity, to sacrifice his own sense of the right to the authoritative command of the law, to ask only what is legal and ask not if it is also just.

To be sure, one value comes with every positive-law statute without reference to its content: Any statute is always better than no statute at all, since it at least creates legal certainty. But legal certainty is not the only value that law must effectuate, nor is it the decisive value. Alongside legal certainty, there are two other values: purposiveness and justice. In ranking these values, we assign to last place the purposiveness of the law in serving the public benefit.