The main purpose of this book is to offer a logical analysis of legal propositions, especially of constitutional propositions. This analysis shows the relationship between truth-conditions of legal propositions and the problem of indeterminacy. Where the law is indeterminate, legal propositions lack truth-values. The background of this approach is the philosophical debate between realism and antirealism. The book deals with the notions of legal norms and legal systems and provides an analysis of the notion of legal indeterminacy and its relation to gaps, contradictions and the vagueness of legal concepts. It shows also that the simple model of a legal system is not sufficient to account for the complexity of legal propositions referring to legal systems of some degree of maturity. Several notions from legal dynamics are presented in order to bring to light the importance of concepts like applicability or hierarchy for the determination of the truth-value of a legal proposition. Thus the primacy of constitution becomes a central idea in the theoretical reconstruction of most contemporary legal systems; a conceptual explanation of this idea is presented and some conclusions from that explanation are drawn. Finally, a particular conception of constitutional interpretation is proposed. Special attention is paid to the relationship between interpretation and legal indeterminacy and, more specifically, to the problem of the discretion enjoyed by the organs entrusted with applying the constitution and also to the several theses that have been discussed controversially in the context of constitutional interpretation, such as the relevance of the intentions for the interpretation of theconstitution and for the justification of judicial review.

In this book, I present the results of an investigation which began with an extended stay at Oxford's Balliol College during the first half of 1995. My visit to Oxford was made possible by a grant from the Spanish Ministerio de Educaci6n y Ciencia. My sincere thanks go to Joseph Raz who served as my supervisor in Oxford. For several points of the present study, conversations with Timothy Endicott in Oxford were also of great help. The book is part of a larger project of investigation, directed by Albert Calsami- glia, which is a joint effort of a group of legal philosophers from the Universitat Pom- peu Fabra (Barcelona) and the Universitat de Girona, and which also receives financial support from the Spanish Ministerio de Educaci6n y Ciencia. An earlier version of the manuscript was presented in June 1996 to the selection committee for a tenured professorship in Legal Philosophy at the Universitat de Girona. The members of the committee were Francisco Laporta, Albert Calsamiglia, Gregorio Peces-Barba, Camilo J. Cela Conde, and Francesca Puigpelat. I am grateful to all of them for their comments, which have been extremely useful in preparing the final ver- sion of this book.