dc.description.abstract | The present study attempts to analyze the status quaestionis of legal positivism today, understood on two levels: first, while theoretical construct that seeks to reassert itself within the legal sciences after the famous and well established critics of Ronald Dworkin. Second, in the form of practices that are still present in the common sense of Brazilian jurists, among which highlights the issue of judicial discretion. This study seeks to overcome the classic Hart-Dworkin debate of thirty years ago to look at how this debate evolved. In other words: how today positivists dealt with the critics of Dworkin and what this author now has to say about contemporary positivist theories in Law academy. We also wanted to demonstrate that judicial discretion inherited from Kelsens normativism has an Achilles Heel philosophy, namely, its necessary connection with the philosophical skepticism, a position historically overcome within the philosophy since the times of Plato and Aristotle. In addition to this poor philosophical background, the positivist judicial discretion is inherently incompatible with the modern models of democratic rule of law, born in the twentieth century within the paradigm of neoconstitutionality (Contemporary Constitutionalism) after the Second World War. | pt_BR |