Guastini argues that legal positivism was first conceived as a type of legal philosophy by Norberto Bobbio in 1950, and that Bobbio later distinguished between methodological positivism, theoretical positivism and ideological positivism. For Bobbio, methodological positivism is a (normative) view about legal scholarship, namely, that it should be descriptive; that theoretical positivism is a substantive theory of law, according to which law is a set of commands issued by the sovereign, legal interpretation is a cognitive enterprise, and the application of law is a matter of deduction; that ideological positivism is the view that one ought to obey the law regardless of its content; and that all three types of legal positivism share the view that there is no such thing as natural law. As Guastini explains, contemporary Italian legal philosophers reject theoretical positivism and mostly conceive of legal positivism along methodological lines, holding that there is no natural law, that it is important to distinguish between expository and censorial jurisprudence (in Bentham’s terminology), and that there is no obligation to obey the law all things considered or regardless of the law.

The Directive on Damages Actions 104/2014 (the Damages Directive) has laid down a common European framework for the regulation of competition damages actions. It establishes fundamental principles, such as the right to compensation and the joint liability of antitrust infringers for such compensation. However, it explicitly avoids defining causation, thus leaving it to the domestic laws of member states. The only limit set by the EU law is the observance of the principles of equivalence and effectiveness, in line with what was already disposed by the CJEU in Manfredi. However, there are some principles addressing causation that can be found in European law and case law.