Muy buena obra. El derecho como herramienta que permite planificar y en consecuencia como ordenador para el futuro de la conducta. Pretende dejar atrás la polémica jusnat. positivismo, pero termina siendo a mi criterio un positivista soft ( )

A famous philosopher once said: a book should be 200 pages long. If it is longer, it is two books. That comment fits the page count of this book almost exactly. Up to just about page 200 this book is a study of what law is. The author's answer is that law is a form of planning, and that the benefits that law brings in large societies, such as lower deliberation and negotiation costs or increased predictability and accountability, are comparable to benefits that planning often brings in smaller social settings. He builds a nice theory of plans from individual plans to group plans and societal plans, which leads to his Planning Theory of Law. I really liked this first part of the book, and the author's theory hold some nice insights that definitely outweigh other theories of law that I have encountered.

The second half of the books deals with legal interpretation. The author is especially keen to mirror his Planning Theory of Law against Ronald Dworkin's theories of interpretation. This makes for some tedious reading as delves into Dworking work at great length. The resulting theory of legal interpretation isn't half as interesting or original as the first half of the book. It's a pity that the editor didn't draw the author's attention to how the book loses focus towards the end. They probably could have shortened the second half of the book by half without losing anything significant. Or just published a second book.

Overall, I think the Planning Theory of Law is worth studying because it reveals some interesting philosophical aspects of law-making. Questions of interpretation, on the other hand, are not so closely linked to the nature of law that the planning theory would yield a better understanding of how it should be carried out.