DOGMATIC, RIGHTS FUNDAMENTAL AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE: ANALYSIS OF A CONFLICT

Abstract

Th is study attempts to show the main implications for the criminal justice system of the meaningful concept of action formulated by Vives Antón in his Fundamentos del sistema penal (1996) and recently in his Fundamentos del sistema penal. Acción signifi cativa y derechos fundamentales.
In this concept, the constitutional principles governing the entire system are classed as dogma, and the priority of fundamental rights, and the pretensions of justice and legitimacy (validity) deriving from them, over any supposed science is affi rmed.
Fighting for a criminal justice system that puts fundamental rights into eff ect is, in fact, the fi nal objective Vives is pursuing with his meaningful concept of action. In seeing meaning as linguistic signifi cance, what he is trying to do is to put language at the heart of the criminal justice system. It is language that brings people together, allowing them to understand one another because they coincide on a way of life: the way of life that makes them equals. This presupposes a community in which it is possible to have dialogue, to argue, to convince, and ultimately to treat others as subjects and not objects. And, from my recognition of others as people derives, as a necessary condition, the connection of the entire legal system to a series of rights that are inseparable from the human condition of those on whom the correctness of any pretension to normative validity depends.