Once Kelsen admits, as he does, that the content of a basic norm is fully determined by practice, it becomes very difficult to understand how the explication of legal validity he offers is non-reductive.
At this point, Kelsen admits, 'one presupposes a new basic norm, no longer the basic norm delegating law making authority to the monarch, but a basic norm delegating authority to the revolutionary government' (PT1, 59).
Kelsen, however, quite explicitly admits that efficacy is a condition of the validity of the basic norm: A basic norm is legally valid if and only if it is actually followed in a given population.
If not, however, there may be grounds for doubting that it represents a basic norm or practical reason.
Gibbard (2005) suggests that, in general, objective oughts can be reduced to subjective ones.[48] Other options for the guidance normativist are to conceive of (NB4) as the basic norm for belief, or to construe the nature of belief as given by both (NB4) and (NB1) (Wedgwood 2007, 162) or (NB3).
There are many difficulties with this, not least of which is the fact that if we are willing to tolerate the basic norm as a solution it is not clear why we thought there was a problem in the first place.
In such a case, the priest must argue as if he endorses the basic norm of Jewish Law, but of course, being a Catholic, he does not really endorse it, it does not reflect his own views about what is right and wrong (Raz 1979, 153 157).
Joseph Raz has called these kinds of statements "detached normative statements"; the anarchist argues as if she endorses the basic norm, without actually endorsing it.
Anarchism is understood here precisely as a rejection of the normative validity of law; however, even the anarchist can make an argument about what the law in this or that context requires; and when she makes such an argument, she must presuppose the legal point of view, she must argue as if she endorses the basic norm of the relevant legal system.
On his view, law is characterized by a basic form and basic norm.
