a discussion is started about the relationship between law and power, seen as a presupposition for an assessment of the nature of law. As a matter of fact, as has been remarked, ¿general theories of law struggle to do justice to the 1 multiple dualities of the law¿. Indeed, law has a ¿dual nature¿: it is a fact, but it also a norm, a sort of ideal entity. Law is sanction, but it is also discourse. It is effectivity, or facticity, but it is also a vehicle of principles among which the central one is justice. But this duality is not only a phenomenological, or a matter of justi cation and implementation as two separate moments.