Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.3935/zpfz.76.2.3
Abstract Weight Revisited: Concept and Challenges
Víctor García-Yzaguirre
orcid.org/0000-0002-4662-2919
; Faculty of Law, University of Girona, Girona, Spain
Abstract
This article examines the concept of abstract weight within Alexy’s weight formula and the grounds on which it can be identified and employed as a premise in balancing. It argues that abstract weight is not a residual or merely intuitive variable but performs a distinct structural function: it expresses a defeasible priority between competing principles that operates independently of the case-specific intensity of interference. The article reconstructs abstract weight as a relational ordering premise, analytically distinct from concrete weight and epistemic reliability, and responds to two challenges: the non-deducibility objection, which contests its role in internal justification, and the epistemic impossibility objection, which questions whether it admits of determinate identification.
Keywords
abstract weight; weight formula; balancing; legal principles; proportionality
Hrčak ID:
349597
URI
Publication date:
21.7.2026.
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