In 1924-25 he studied for a doctoral degree at the Faculty of Law at the Central University of Madrid, and wrote a dissertation about the influence of Catholic thought on legal philosophy, with special reference to the work of Francisco Suárez.
From June to August 1925, on a scholarship from the Spanish government, he studied the philosophy of law at the University of Rome under the direction of Professor Giorgio del Vecchio.
From November 1926 to April 1927 he continued his scholarship-funded studies in law, philosophy, and sociology at the University of Vienna, under the direction of professors Hans Kelsen, Fritz Schreier, Felix Kaufmann and R.
He described the role of the judiciary as creative, in that it applies the abstractions of law, as formulated by the legislative branch, to specific situations involving “the living and authentic man, with his strengths and weaknesses, with his joys and his sufferings, with his good and his evil.” Recaséns Siches agreed with Francesco Carnelutti that for this reason “the judge is more important than the legislator.” In his view it was “fundamental to make an adequate integration between the theory of values and the sphere of human existence so that they do not have the character of abstract principles.” For him, the fundamental rights of the individual are founded in the idea of human dignity.
For him, law, like tools and scientific theories and musical compositions, is a part of “objectified human life,” a product of culture in which the dimensions of value, norm, and fact are indissolubly linked.
In this regard, his legal thinking was largely consistent with that of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Benjamin Cardozo, John Dewey, and others.
If they do not recognize the dignity of people, they are not legal norms and therefore they are unfair.“[4] On December 20, 1927, he was named a tenured professor in the Philosophy of Law at the University of Santiago.
From Paris, on May 18, 1937, he wrote to Spain’s Ministry of Public Instruction to report that he had received an invitation to teach at the National University of Mexico.
At the National School of Jurisprudence he served as professor of Philosophy of Law beginning on July 1, 1937, and taught General Theory of the State and Sociology.
Over the years he also taught courses and delivered lectures at a number of universities in Mexico, as well as in pre-Castro Cuba, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.
He was also a visiting professor in Puerto Rico in 1953 and in Texas in 1962 and 1969, and a guest lecturer at universities in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Peru, Brazil, West Germany, France, and Italy.
He contributed to professional journals in Mexico, Spain, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Italy, France, and West Germany.
From 1967 he was a member of the Steering Committee of the International Vereinigung für Rechtsphilosophie, in the Latin American section of the Federal Republic of Germany.
[13] Recaséns also translated books by Alois Fischer and Raul Richter, Hans Kelsen, Giorgio Vecchio, Paul Barth, Josef L. Kunz, Emil Brunner, and others.
[16] Luis Recaséns Siches died in Mexico City on July 4, 1977, of a myocardial infarction complicated by non-traumatic respiratory failure.
After his death, the Spanish jurist Joaquín Ruiz Giménez said of him: "His humanism was radically personalist, liberal in the deepest sense, but his human sensibility led him to be repelled by socio-economic injustices and he longed for an authentic democracy that increasing combined freedom and equality.”[17] He spoke French, English, German and Italian.