A proposal of classification

This list of meanings is by no means exhaustive (without claiming to exhaust the senses in which legal theorists speak of 'principles', Carrio distinguishes eleven different concepts), nor is it exclusive: the meanings overlap, and as the reader probably noticed, a good number of the norms used as an example for one sense of 'principle' could have been used also as an example for other sen­ses of the expression.

1.3.1. First of all, we can distinguish between principles in the strict sense ['principles' in the sense of d)] and policies or program norms ['principles' in the sense of c)]. This distinction we understand to be exhaustive and exclusive. To regard the distinction as exhaustive implies that properties a) — great gene­rality — and b) — presence of centrally vague terms — which normally ac­company both principles in the strict sense and policies do not by themselves allow us to qualify some standard as a principle. As for e) and f), standards with these properties, if they also have properties a) and/or b), can be reduced either to principles in the strict sense or to policies. To see the distinction as exclusive implies that, although one and the same sentence can be understood as a prin­ciple in some contexts of reasoning and as a policy in others (and it can even be said that this is an ambiguity that is typical of many principles), one and the same person cannot use them, in one and the same context of reasoning, in both senses at the same time.

1.3.2. The second distinction we think is important is the one that can be drawn (freely using Alchourrdn and Bulygin's [1971] terminology, with a scope some­what different from theirs) between principles in the context of the primary system or system of the subject, and principles in the context of the secondary system or system of the judge (and, generally, of legal organs'), that is, between principles (standards of conduct that can be formulated as principles in the strict sense or as program norms) insofar as they are intended to guide the con­duct of the general public, and principles insofar as they are intended to guide the exercise of public normative powers (the creation and application of norms) by legal organs.

1.3.3. Finally, the last distinction we are interested in is that between explicit principles, i. e., principles explicitly formulated in a legal order, and implicit principles, i. e., principles derived from other sentences existing in a legal order (e. g., the principle that norms are to be interpreted as if they had been issued by a rational legislator). Obviously, this distinction is exhaustive and exclusive.