Abstract The aim of this chapter is to examine some of the most important aspects that characterise legal positivism in the civil law tradition. First, it examines the seminal insights developed independently by Norberto Bobbio and Alf Ross into the ambiguity of the term ‘legal positivism’, which prior to their contributions was used loosely to refer to legalistic ideology, formalistic legal theory, and empirical legal methodology. Second, it explores the connections between ethical noncognitivism and positivism itself, which positivist theorists in the civil law tradition have found difficult to avoid. Next, three of the most important results of civil law legal positivism are examined: the analysis of the systematic properties of norms (such as validity, applicability, efficacy, and defeasibility), the theory of normative systems, and the theory of legal interpretation.