The Problem of Power and its limits
The Theory of Legal Narcissism begins with the examination of a fundamental problem of law: the relationship between the exercise of power and the legal limits established to constrain it. Throughout the development of the modern state, the construction of mechanisms designed to limit authority became an essential element of constitutional government and the Rule of Law.
The Centrality of Legal Norms
The application of law necessarily requires interpretation. Yet the inevitable role of interpretation raises a fundamental question: at what point does interpretation cease to operate within the limits established by legal norms and begin to participate in defining those very limits?
The Problem examined by the Theory
The Theory of Legal Narcissism develops within this tension among legal norms, interpretation, and power. Its object is not the psychological analysis of individual interpreters, but the examination of a legal-institutional phenomenon associated with the progressive centrality of interpretive authority in defining the scope and limits of law itself.