Philosophy is not to relieve one of decisions, but to confront him with decisions. It is to make life not easy but, on the contrary, problematical. - Gustav Radbruch

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.

The most conspicuous characteristic of Hitler’s personality, which became through his influence the pervading spirit of the whole of National Socialist ‘law’ as well, was a complete lack of any sense of truth or any sense of right and wrong.

Of course it is true that the public benefit, along with justice, is an objective of the law. And of course laws have value in and of themselves, even bad laws: the value, namely, of securing the law against uncertainty.