CARLOS E. ALCHOURRÓN AND EUGENIO BULYGIN ^**

Questions concerning the ontological status and the logical properties of
norms have been much debated in recent years, not only by legal and
moral philosophers but also by a steadily increasing number of a 'deon-
tic' logicians. In spite of this a number of very basic problems have
apparently not been solved, and persist.

One such issue is the problem of the possibility of a logic of norms.
Some authors think that there are logical relations between norms, and
so favour the development of a specific logic of norms (sometimes called
'deontic logic', though 'normative logic' would perhaps be a more
appropriate name). ¹ Other writers deny the very possibility of such a
logic because in their view there are no logical relations between norms.
According to them deontic logic can only assume the form of a logic of
normative propositions, that is, (true or false) propositions about (the
existence of) norms. ²

Another fundamental problem, or perhaps another aspect of the same
problem on which there is no consensus, is the relation of norms to truth:
whereas some writers readily ascribe truth-values to norms, ³ others
emphatically deny that norms could conceivably be true or false. This
issue is related to the first one, but not in a very clear way. Those authors

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