Critical remarks concerning the theory of general principles of law and its methodological implications

In the Latvian discourse of the theory of law and legal practice, there is a set of influential ideas that constitute a theory of general principles of law. This article aims to offer some critical remarks on the aforementioned theory and to explore some resulting methodological implications. In this article, two main research methods are used: the descriptive and the deductive methods. The examination of the theory resulted in the conclusion that it is self-contradictory to assert that the basic norm (a democratic state based on the Rule of Law) can determine the entire content of the legal system. Following are some methodological implications: First, instead of asserting that all legal methods are general principles of law, one should adopt a more general norm that is flexible enough and avoids contradictions between different obligations to use legal methods, i.e. the principle of reasonable application of legal norms. Second, the interpretation of written legal norms and the concretisation of unwritten ones cannot coexist if the basic norm determines the entire content of the legal system because of the postulate which asserts that writing down unwritten legal norms in a normative act does not change its unwritten nature.