7

Norm, normal, and the law. Today, it is taken for granted that the norm is both a rule and an average, and both prescriptive and descriptive. The adjective “normal” derives from the norm and describes the state of conformity to it. As regards the legal norm, it forms a simple branch of the tree of norms. To conclude the syllogism, all that is legal would be normal. However, this ignores the relationship between the law and the normal, which is more a question of power than of logic. In theory, science has surpassed the former norm-rule with a pure and objective norm-average that reveals a form of reality-verity. In practice, it has created the normal, generating the mirage of the a-norm with which the law shares ambiguous and lethal links and which are far more obscure and complex than a simple syllogism.