| This research looks into the legal force of legal instruments. One of the research questions that will be considered concerns the requirements that a suitable typology of legal force has to comply with. Next, two possible typologies will be deduced from elements of the pure theory of law (Kelsen) and the institutional theory of law (MacCormick, Weinberger, Ruiter). These two typologies will be confronted with a sample of instruments of international organizations, especially the European Union. In order to realize their ambitions, these organizations adopt many different legal instruments, suffering from a lack of clarity as far as legal force is concerned. To illustrate: some instruments have the same denominations, whereas their legal force is far from identical. Finally, the research will evaluate which of the two typologies is the more suitable from an analytic point of view. |
