Download or read book Objectivity and the Rule of Law written by Matthew Kramer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-06-11 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is objectivity? What is the rule of law? Are the operations of legal systems objective? If so, in what ways and to what degrees are they objective? Does anything of importance depend on the objectivity of law? These are some of the principal questions addressed by Matthew H. Kramer in this lucid and wide-ranging study that introduces readers to vital areas of philosophical enquiry. As Kramer shows, objectivity and the rule of law are complicated phenomena, each comprising a number of distinct though overlapping dimensions. Although the connections between objectivity and the rule of law are intimate, they are also densely multi-faceted.

Download or read book Legal Indeterminacy and Constitutional Interpretation written by J.J. Moreso and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main purpose of this book is to offer a logical analysis of legal propositions, especially of constitutional propositions. This analysis shows the relationship between truth-conditions of legal propositions and the problem of indeterminacy. Where the law is indeterminate, legal propositions lack truth-values. The background of this approach is the philosophical debate between realism and antirealism. The book deals with the notions of legal norms and legal systems and provides an analysis of the notion of legal indeterminacy and its relation to gaps, contradictions and the vagueness of legal concepts. It shows also that the simple model of a legal system is not sufficient to account for the complexity of legal propositions referring to legal systems of some degree of maturity. Several notions from legal dynamics are presented in order to bring to light the importance of concepts like applicability or hierarchy for the determination of the truth-value of a legal proposition. Thus the primacy of constitution becomes a central idea in the theoretical reconstruction of most contemporary legal systems; a conceptual explanation of this idea is presented and some conclusions from that explanation are drawn. Finally, a particular conception of constitutional interpretation is proposed. Special attention is paid to the relationship between interpretation and legal indeterminacy and, more specifically, to the problem of the discretion enjoyed by the organs entrusted with applying the constitution and also to the several theses that have been discussed controversially in the context of constitutional interpretation, such as the relevance of the intentions for the interpretation of the constitution and for the justification of judicial review.

Download or read book Indeterminacy and the Rule of Law written by S. G. Williams and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Legal Indeterminacy Made in America written by James R. Maxeiner and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thesis of this Article is that the indeterminacy that plagues American law is "Made in America." It is not inherent in law. Rather, it is a product of specific choices of legal methods and of legal structures made in the American legal system.

Download or read book Strategic Indeterminacy in the Law written by David Lanius and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-30 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though indeterminacy in legal texts is pervasive, there is a widespread misunderstanding about what indeterminacy is, particularly as it pertains to law. Legal texts present unique challenges insofar as they address a heterogeneous audience, are applied in a variety of unforeseeable circumstances and must, at the same time, lay down clear and unambiguous standards. Sometimes they fail to do so, however, either by accident or by intention. While many have claimed that indeterminacy facilitates flexibility and can be strategically used, few have recognized that there are more forms of indeterminacy than vagueness and ambiguity. A comprehensive account of legal indeterminacy is thus called for. David Lanius here answers that call and in so doing, addresses three central questions about the role of indeterminacy in the law. First, what are the sources of indeterminacy in law? Second, what effects do the different forms of indeterminacy have? Third, how can and should these forms be intentionally used? Based on a thorough examination of the advantages and disadvantages of the different forms of indeterminacy in the wording of laws, contracts, and verdicts, Lanius argues for the claim that semantic vagueness is less relevant than commonly supposed in the debate, while other forms of indeterminacy (in particular, polysemy and standard-relativity) are mistakenly underrated or even ignored. This misconception is due to a systematic confusion between semantic vagueness and these other forms of indeterminacy. Once it is resolved, the value and functions of linguistic indeterminacy in the law can be clearly shown.

Download or read book A Discussion of Critical Legal Studies Claim of Legal Indeterminacy written by Ian Benitez and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2015-08-19 with total page 53 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bachelor Thesis from the year 2015 in the subject Law - Philosophy, History and Sociology of Law, grade: 1.75, , course: Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, language: English, abstract: This paper challenges the Critical Legal Studies (CLS) claims of legal indeterminacy. It shall use a legal formalist logic and language as its main assertion, further maintaining that the CLS claims is only grounded in ambiguity and confusion. CLS is a legal theory that challenges and overturns accepted norms and standards in legal theory and practice. They maintained that law in the historical and contemporary society has an alleged impartiality, and it is used as a tool of privilege and power – law is politics. Consequently, CLS maintained that these results to indeterminacy of law. Legal indeterminacy can be summed up as contrary to the common understanding that legal materials, statutes and case law, do not really answer legal disputes. Legal principles and doctrines, as CLS scholars claim, are said to be indeterminate, for it is riddle with gaps, conflicts, and anomalies that are widely present even in simple cases. Legal indeterminacy also rises because of the underlying political power – law is politics – that implicates law as merely a tool for oppression. This thesis shows that CLS assertions with legal indeterminacy is only grounded on ambiguity. On one hand, using the main concept of legal formalist logic and language grounded with sub-arguments: inherent generality of legal language, reasoned elaboration, and neutral principles, it refutes the CLS claims of legal indeterminacy. On the other, the paper maintains that their main reason of legal indeterminacy, ‘law is politics’, is merely a statement of fact that currently happens in society is sentimental and weak through counterexamples.

Download or read book The Law of International Lawyers written by Wouter Werner and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-30 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades, Martti Koskenniemi has not just been an influential writer in international law; his work has caused a significant shift in the direction of the field. This book engages with some of the core questions that have animated Koskenniemi's scholarship so far. Its chapters attest to the breadth and depth of Koskenniemi's oeuvre and the different ways in which he has explored these questions. Koskenniemi's work is applied to a wide range of functional areas in international law and discussed in relation to an even broader range of theoretical perspectives, including history, political theory, sociology and international relations theory. These invaluable insights have been expertly brought together by the volume editors, who identify the key and common themes of many of the book's contributions. This volume demonstrates the importance of critical legal scholarship in the ways international law is enacted, shaped and reshaped over time.

Download or read book Proof of Causation in Tort Law written by Sandy Steel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-11 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A clear, critical analysis of proof of causation in the law of tort in England, France and Germany.

Download or read book Vagueness and Law written by Geert Keil and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vague expressions are omnipresent in natural language. As such, their use in legal texts is virtually inevitable. If a law contains vague terms, the question whether it applies to a particular case often lacks a clear answer. One of the fundamental pillars of the rule of law is legal certainty. The determinacy of the law enables people to use it as a guide and places judges in the position to decide impartially. Vagueness poses a threat to these ideals. In borderline cases, the law seems to be indeterminate and thus incapable of serving its core rule of law value. In the philosophy of language, vagueness has become one of the hottest topics of the last two decades. Linguists and philosophers have investigated what distinguishes "soritical" vagueness from other kinds of linguistic indeterminacy, such as ambiguity, generality, open texture, and family resemblance concepts. There is a vast literature that discusses the logical, semantic, pragmatic, and epistemic aspects of these phenomena. Legal theory has hitherto paid little attention to the differences between the various kinds of linguistic indeterminacy that are grouped under the heading of "vagueness", let alone to the various theories that try to account for these phenomena. Bringing together leading scholars working on the topic of vagueness in philosophy and in law, this book fosters a dialogue between philosophers and legal scholars by examining how philosophers conceive vagueness in law from their theoretical perspective and how legal theorists make use of philosophical theories of vagueness. The chapters of the book are organized into three parts. The first part addresses the import of different theories of vagueness for the law, referring to a wide range of theories from supervaluationist to contextualist and semantic realist accounts in order to address the question of whether the law can learn from engaging with philosophical discussions of vagueness. The second part of the book examines different vagueness phenomena. The contributions in part 2 suggest that the greater awareness to different vagueness phenomena can make lawyers aware of specific issues and solutions so far overlooked. The third part deals with the pragmatic aspects of vagueness in law, providing answers to the question of how to deal with vagueness in law and with the professional, political, moral, and ethical issues such vagueness gives rise to.

Download or read book Legal Indeterminacy in Context written by Scott Alan Anderson and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: The debate in legal theory over whether judges' decisions are adequately constrained by law is predicated on a more fundamental issue, namely, whether law is indeterminate. In short, if the law has "gaps", then judges might be permitted to use discretion to settle cases calling for an application of the indeterminate law. In the debates over legal reasoning and legal indeterminacy, an even more basic issue is often overlooked, however: what is the source of legal indeterminacy? Three theorists have offered descriptions of alleged "gaps" in law by emphasizing three distinct sources of those gaps. Oliver Wendell Holmes is committed to an ontic approach, focusing on the systemic "gaps" inherent in a system requiring judges to determine law by finalizing it. H.L.A. Hart offers a semantic approach, focusing on the linguistic "gaps" in legal terms that exhibit an "open texture". Ronald Dworkin offers an epistemic approach to account for what others take to be indeterminacy in law, describing the alleged legal "gaps" as judicial uncertainty in locating and applying relevant political principles to determine law in difficult cases. Philosophers have also taken ontic, semantic, and epistemic approaches to describing the similar phenomenon of vagueness. None of these accounts seems satisfactory, however. In response, contextualist theorists have offered an alternative approach. In particular, Stewart Shapiro has recently described vagueness within the context of an ongoing conversation. Vagueness, on this view, is described as borderline cases of open-textured terms that give evaluators discretion to decide those cases either way. Since Shapiro and Hart both employ Friedrich Waismann's notion of "open texture" to describe vagueness and legal indeterminacy (respectively), a reconstruction of Hart's theory on contextualist grounds is in order. The reconstructed view of Hart, termed "legal contextualism," describes legal indeterminacy, not as a semantic defect of open-textured terms, but rather as a borderline case in which judges have the discretion to apply or not to apply open-textured terms in settling disputes. Legal contextualism answers the main arguments against Hart's initial theory. Legal contextualism also suggests a starting point for the indeterminacy debate--confusion over the suppressed systematic ambiguity of the term "law."

Download or read book Getting to the Rule of Law written by James E. Fleming and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rule of law has been celebrated as “an unqualified human good," yet there is considerable disagreement about what the ideal of the rule of law requires. When people clamor for the preservation or extension of the rule of law, are they advocating a substantive conception of the rule of law respecting private property and promoting liberty, a formal conception emphasizing an “inner morality of law,” or a procedural conception stressing the right to be heard by an impartial tribunal and to make arguments about what the law is? When are exertions of executive power “outside the law” justified on the ground that they may be necessary to maintain or restore the conditions for the rule of law in emergency circumstances, such as defending against terrorist attacks? In Getting to the Rule of Law a group of contributors from a variety of disciplines address many of the theoretical legal, political, and moral issues raised by such questions and examine practical applications “on the ground” in the United States and around the world. This timely, interdisciplinary volume examines the ideal of the rule of law, questions when, if ever, executive power “outside the law” is justified to maintain or restore the rule of law, and explores the prospects for and perils of building the rule of law after military interventions.

Download or read book The Limits of Reason written by John A. Eisenberg and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through lucid theoretical analysis and his own extensive experience in these areas, he demonstrates that the outcomes of rationally conceived programs are usually at odds with the intended result. Eisenberg traces this failure to an intrinsic logical incompatibility between what reason tries to do and what it can do. Rational method is premised on the possibility of conceiving and correlating all operative factors in a given process. However, all such factors cannot be taken into account. Using a social variation of the "principle of indeterminancy," the author notes that reason cannot take itself into account any more than the eye can see itself seeing or the hand can grasp itself grasping. Similarly, reason cannot control how institutional structure affects social behavior, nor how legal language determines social reality. Eisenberg locates an intrinsic indeterminacy in society that precludes total or even substantial understanding and control of our destinies

Download or read book Indeterminacy of International Law written by Severin Meier and published by sui generis Verlag. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most important (in)determinacy theses in international law since the 1920s are scrutinised in this book. As Severin Meier demonstrates, the extent of legal determinacy depends neither on some linguistic essence found in the text nor on theories that allegedly stand above practice. Instead, the (in)determinacy of law is shown to arise purely from practice. This reconceptualisation of a key discussion in legal philosophy provides a new perspective on the frame of meaning of legal norms.

Download or read book The Rule of Law in Comparative Perspective written by Mortimer Sellers and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-07-23 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume compares the different conceptions of the rule of law that have developed in different legal cultures. It describes the social purposes and practical applications of the rule of law and how it might be improved in the varied circumstances.

Download or read book The End of Law written by William E. Scheuerman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-10-18 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholarly and political interest in the work of the controversial twentieth century German thinker Carl Schmitt has exploded in the 20 years since William E. Scheuerman’s important book was first published. However, Scheuerman’s work remains distinctive. Firstly, it focuses directly on Schmitt’s complex ideas about law, situating his views within broader debates about the rule of law and its fate. The volume shows how every facet of his political thinking was decisively shaped by his legal reflections. Secondly, the volume takes Schmitt’s Nazi-era political and legal writings no less seriously. Finally, the volume offers a series of studies on figures in postwar US political thought (Friedrich Hayek and Joseph Schumpeter), demonstrating how Schmitt shaped their own influential theories. This timely second edition underscores how and why the recent growth of interest in Schmitt has been prompted by political developments, for example, debates about counterterrorism and emergency government, and the rise of authoritarian populism.

Download or read book The Legal Framework of the OSCE written by Mateja Steinbrück Platise and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-30 with total page 801 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the world's largest regional security organisation, possesses most of the attributes traditionally ascribed to an international organisation, but lacks a constitutive treaty and an established international legal personality. Moreover, OSCE decisions are considered mere political commitments and thus not legally binding. As such, it seems to correspond to the general zeitgeist, in which new, less formal actors and forms of international cooperation gain prominence, while traditional actors and instruments of international law are in stagnation. However, an increasing number of voices - including the OSCE participating states - have been advocating for more formal and autonomous OSCE institutional structures, for international legal personality, or even for the adoption of a constitutive treaty. The book analyses why and how these demands have emerged, critically analyses the reform proposals and provides new arguments for revisiting the OSCE legal framework.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to the Rule of Law written by Jens Meierhenrich and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-12 with total page 715 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge Companion to the Rule of Law introduces students, scholars, and practitioners to the theory and history of the rule of law, one of the most frequently invoked-and least understood-ideas of legal and political thought and policy practice. It offers a comprehensive re-assessment by leading scholars of one of the world's most cherished traditions. This high-profile collection provides the first global and interdisciplinary account of the histories, moralities, pathologies and trajectories of the rule of law. Unique in conception, and critical in its approach, it evaluates, breaks down, and subverts conventional wisdom about the rule of law for the twenty-first century.