The ten legal essays in this book deal with a wide variety of topics: the future of Law and the philosophy of Law, legal reasoning, the limits of Law, judicial activism, human rights, Law and literature ... All of them obey, however, the same underlying purpose that is specified in the idea that, contrary to what is usually thought (of what non-jurists tend to think, relying - it must be recognized - in ways of acting that are quite frequent among jurists themselves), Law is an essentially problematic, open enterprise that requires considerable doses of imagination, considerable theoretical resources, training and moral integrity, and which is essential to understand the social world and contribute to its transformation.
The author therefore claims the importance of developing and transmitting a type of legal culture that may not be very present in our law schools, nor in the practice of many legal professionals, but that has a value that, in a certain sense, it could even rise above that of scientific culture. As it is said at the end of the essay that gives title to the entire volume, after all, the laws of physics or biology continue to be valid, that is, they continue to work, regardless of whether we know them or not. that we share or reject them. But that does not happen in relation to the Law, because the legal reality is not natural, but conventional: the Law is a great social artifact that shapes our lives. A legal system - in particular, that of a constitutional State - cannot function well if there is not a sufficient number of agents who share its values, who understand what it means to have rights, to live in a State of Law, what it is that is reasonably can be required of a judge or when it makes sense to legally regulate a relationship.
Ignorance of the law - as the old adage goes - does not exempt it from compliance, but the lack of a well-understood legal culture does contribute to the breach of the promises of human emancipation on which our systems of constitutional democracy are based.