Detection and resolution of normative conflicts in multi-agent systems : a literature survey

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Incrementalism and Path Dependence: European Integration and Institutional Change in National Parliaments

This article analyses the manner in which the Parliaments of France, the UK and Greece have reacted to the process of European integration. It is argued that their reactions display an incremental logic marked by slow, small and marginal changes based on existing institutional repertoires. In all three cases Parliaments have used familiar mechanisms and procedures which they have modified only marginally. This reaction was path dependent, i.e. it was consistent with long-established patterns reflecting the subordinate position of these Parliaments within national polities

Weak and Strong Necessity Modals: On Linguistic Means of Expressing "A Primitive Concept OUGHT"

This paper develops an account of the meaning of `ought', and the distinction between weak necessity modals (`ought', `should') and strong necessity modals (`must', `have to'). I argue that there is nothing specially ``strong'' about strong necessity modals per se: uses of `Must p' predicate the (deontic/epistemic/etc.) necessity of the prejacent p of the actual world (evaluation world). The apparent ``weakness'' of weak necessity modals derives from their bracketing whether the necessity of the prejacent is verified in the actual world. `Ought p' can be accepted without needing to settle that the relevant considerations (norms, expectations, etc.) that actually apply verify the necessity of p. I call the basic account a modal-past approach to the weak/strong necessity modal distinction (for reasons that become evident). Several ways of implementing the approach in the formal semantics/pragmatics are critically examined. The account systematizes a wide range of linguistic phenomena: it generalizes across flavors of modality; it elucidates a special role that weak necessity modals play in discourse and planning; it captures contrasting logical, expressive, and illocutionary properties of weak and strong necessity modals; and it sheds light on how a notion of `ought' is often expressed in other languages. These phenomena have resisted systematic explanation. In closing I briefly consider how linguistic inquiry into differences among necessity modals may improve theorizing on broader philosophical issues

Natural Law Ambiguities

I share with Fred Schauer the relatively unpopular belief that the positivist insistence that we keep separate the legal is from the legal ought is a logical prerequisite to meaningful legal criticism, and therefore, in the constitutional context, is a logical prerequisite to meaningful criticism of the Constitution. As Schauer argues, despite the modern inclination to associate positivism with conservatism, the positivist separation thesis, properly understood, facilitates legal criticism and legal reform, not reactionary acquiescence. If we want to improve law, we must resist the urge to see it through the proverbial rose-colored glasses; we must be clear that a norm\u27s legality implies nothing about its morality. To reverse the classical natural lawyer\u27s formulation of the issue, if we wish to make our laws just, we must first see that many of our laws are unjust, and if we are to understand that simple truth, we must understand that the legality of those norms implies nothing about their justice. Surely the lessons of positivism are more compelling, not less compelling, in the constitutional context where the capacity for self-delusion is so great, given the moralistic content and peculiar history of the Constitution, and where the stakes are highest: the consequences of merging constitutional fact with constitutional virtue are that we preclude even the logical possibility of fundamental criticism of our most foundational legal document. As I have argued at some length elsewhere, by merging in our own minds and in the public mind constitutional morality and critical morality, we have closed the door to meaningful criticism of the Constitution. The positivist\u27s classic and even enlightened insistence on the separation of law and morality, if it would free up criticism of constitutional norms, could bring a welcome breath of fresh air. Today, legal positivism is widely taken to imply not just a conservative stance against legal change, but much worse: a refusal even to engage the issue, a denial of the coherence of legal criticism, and a denial of the relevance, in some sense, of legal reform. Given the historical grounding of positivism in an insistence on the need for legal criticism and legal reform, this modern belief about the reactionary consequences of legal positivism is strikingly peculiar: how did black become white? Where did this belief, so widely shared yet so wildly at odds with both the clear history and the apparent logic of legal positivism, come from? In these comments I want to supplement Fred Schauer\u27s discussion and general defense of positivism with a brief response, in a sense, to Cover\u27s quite chilling indictment. I will ultimately argue that whatever the (limited) force of Cover\u27s indictment of the positivism of the abolitionist judges, that argument has no force against the positivism of the nonjudge constitutional critic. The critic, unlike the judge, is interested in competing theories of the relationship between law and morality, not as a guide to legal interpretation, but rather as a guide to clear-headed legal criticism. The constitutional critic, almost by definition, will rarely if ever be a judge. For such a critic, contrary to contemporary opinion and for the reasons stressed by the classical positivists, positivism does indeed facilitate the kind of constitutional criticism that natural law thinking obscures

The Challenges of Europeanization in the Realm of Private Law: A Plea for a New Legal Discipline

http://www.iue.it/PUB/law04-12.pd

The Role of Deontic Logic in the Specification of Information Systems

In this paper we discuss the role that deontic logic plays in the specification of information systems, either because constraints on the systems directly concern norms or, and even more importantly, system constraints are considered ideal but violable (so-called `soft¿ constraints).\ud To overcome the traditional problems with deontic logic (the so-called paradoxes), we first state the importance of distinguishing between ought-to-be and ought-to-do constraints and next focus on the most severe paradox, the so-called Chisholm paradox, involving contrary-to-duty norms. We present a multi-modal extension of standard deontic logic (SDL) to represent the ought-to-be version of the Chisholm set properly. For the ought-to-do variant we employ a reduction to dynamic logic, and show how the Chisholm set can be treated adequately in this setting. Finally we discuss a way of integrating both ought-to-be and ought-to-do reasoning, enabling one to draw conclusions from ought-to-be constraints to ought-to-do ones, and show by an example the use(fulness) of this