The question of whether there is such a thing as permissive norms is one of the most hotly debated issues in legal theory.

The question, of course, is not whe­ther in legal systems there exist sentences of the kind 'p is permitted' or 'p is facultative'. Obviously, sentences of that kind are perfectly common in legal systems.

7) As everyone knows, the primary function of any normative systems is usually understood to be that of guiding human conduct. In the case of manda­tory norms,^[43] that function is fulfilled by stipulating either the obligation to per­form a certain action p in a certain case q (or, what amounts to the same, the prohibition to forbear p in q) or the prohibition to perform p in q (or, what is the same, the obligation to forbear p in q). Thus, mandatory norms, which can be expressed in the form of obligations or prohibitions, command either to do some action or to forbear it, and in this way they separate the sphere of what is licit from that of what is illicit. Permissive norms, understood as norms per­mitting performance as well as forbearance of some action p in some case q, in contrast, do not command anything. Now, does this mean that when we are confronting a norm of this kind — i. e., a norm that permits the performance, but also the forbearance of p in case q — we have a situation that is pragmati­cally equivalent to the situation in which there would be neither a norm that prohibits nor a norm that commands the performance of p in ql Does the per­missive norm add anything that would not be there if there merely were no norm at all, or is it pragmatically irrelevant?

2) And if it turns out that the permissive norm is not pragmatically irre­levant, is that which it adds something different from an indirect formulation or a derogation of some mandatory norms, that is, of some obligation or prohibi­tion?