This study offers a new examination of the place of law (loi) within modern and contemporary philosophy of right (droit). Our approach is not a neutral one, because admitting a contrast between law and right involves the hypothesis that the two are not the same thing; this is contrary to legal positivism, which affirms that right exists only through law, or that what is right is what conforms to the law. To say that right is law allows one to claim that law offers a guarantee. It is something quite different to say that law is right. The boundary between the two concepts is, in itself, rather unclear, changing depending on the ideological sense of the words and the relations understood to hold between them. These lead to questions about form and substance, which we will be able to gain clarity on if we do not equate right with law. This attempt to understand norms and their influence on the individual or groups of individuals follows from a discussion of health, and particularly about decisional processes within this field.