This article deals with an important question of legal justification: What reasons serve to justify a claim that a norm has the status of jus cogens. This question can be approached from two fundamentally different perspectives – in this article referred to as legal positivism and legal idealism. As earlier research has demonstrated, legal positivists have great difficulty justifying their jus cogens claims. What this article argues is that legal idealists face a no less difficult task, and that this prompts an entirely new understanding of the jus cogens discourse. If there is no way for a lawyer to justify a jus cogens claim, then neither is there any way for him or her to refute propositions put forth by others. Jus cogens discourse becomes a safe haven for all kinds of arguments, of which, legally speaking, no one can ever be regarded as any more acceptable than any other.

本文讨论了一个重要的法律合理性问题：什么理由可以证明一个规范具有强制法地位的主张是合理的。这个问题可以从两个根本不同的角度来探讨-在本文中称为法律实证主义和法律理想主义。正如较早的研究表明的那样，法律实证主义者很难证明自己的强制法主张合理。本文认为，法律理想主义者面临着同样艰巨的任务，这促使人们对强制法话语有了全新的理解。如果律师没有办法为强制法提出正当理由，那么他或她也没有任何办法可以反驳他人提出的主张。强制法话语成为各种论点的避风港，从法律上讲，没有人比任何其他论点更能被接受。