THE LEX MERCATORIA WHILE LAW:

A BRIEF ANALYSIS IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW'S CONCEPTS BASED ON THE PRIMARY AND SECONDARY RULES BY H. L. A. HART

Abstract

The Lex Mercatoria, succinctly understood as a set of rules that conduct the interna-tional commerce, is a constant theme in the Private International Law classes and its veracity is a frequent object of study. Contributing to the debate, the actual article has the objective of analysis the Lex Mercatoria while law, with the objective of verify if it has the legal status in the light of Hart's law concept, understood as the combination of the primary and secondary rules. The hypothesis to be tested stands in the sense that, although the Lex Mercatoria pre-sents promptly some elements used by Hart to conceptualize a legal system, it does not consti-tute a sufficient structure that mix the primary and secondary rules, and, therefore, it cannot be understood as law. At the end, we conclude that the fact of the Lex Mercatoria affords just the elements that eventually can be classified as the primary rules of obligation and this factor singly cannot grant the rules that govern the international commerce the legal status, according to the Hart's doctrine, it can be classified as a rudimentary or primitive system of the primary rules that establish a behavior that is followed by the international commerce ac-tors. The research is essentially bibliographic.