Two conceptions of legal principles

The paper discusses the classical understanding of legal principles as the most general norms of a legal order, confronting it with Dworkin's and Alexy's understanding of legal principles as prima facie, unconditional commands. The analysis shows that the common, classical conception brings into question the status of legal principles as norms, by disreguarding their usefulness in judicial reasoning, while, conversely, the latterhas significant import forlegal practice and consequently for legal dogmatics. It is argued that the heuristic fruitfulness of understanding principles as optimization commands thusbecomesapparent. When we understand the relation of priciples to the idea of proportionality, as thespecific mode of their application, which is different from the supsumtive mode of applying rules, the theory of legal principles advanced by Dworkin and Alexy appears therefore to be descriptively better than others, but not without its flaws