An "ongoing conversation": Method and substance in Robinson's justice in extreme cases

It is important for any discipline to keep in touch with developments and ideas in other disciplines that would be considered relevant or connected to it. This proposition is as often stated as it is overlooked in academic research. There is often little appetite to genuinely engage in a fair, open, and thorough exchange between disciplines (even when closely connected), and part of it has to do with the difficulty of the task. It needs a scholar with a deep understanding of the different relevant areas to make this actually work. Darryl Robinson is one such person. He has written an insightful and important book about how international criminal law (ICL) can learn from—mainly—criminal law theory (and how criminal law can also be enriched by the kind of challenges that ICL presents).1 Robinson offers a didactic, sober, interesting account about how reasoning in ICL should be conducted, which includes a plea for the need to take structural principles of criminal law more seriously. In doing so, he also provides much-needed clarity to the convoluted doctrine of command responsibility. His writing is characteristically clear and engaging. He pays careful attention both to the nuance and granularity of philosophical argument and to the concrete practical implications of each of his positions. In this brief reaction piece, I situate this book in the broader literature, highlight a few of its main contributions, and offer a few critical thoughts. The latter are very tentative, and are intended only to pursue the broader conversation he has kicked off...Fil: Chehtman, Alejandro Eduardo. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

A new and improved explanatory account of international law

Miodrag Jovanović has written an important account of why international law must be considered law. In this short review, I argue that his account succeeds at the cost of weakening a central feature of law, namely, its distinct normative force. By contrast, I suggest that we have the conceptual and descriptive tools needed to defend a more robust understanding of international law as providing its subjects with weighty reasons for action.Nova in izboljšana razlaga mednarodnega prava. Miodrag Jovanović je napisal pomembno razlago o tem, zakaj je mednarodno pravo treba šteti za pravo. Avtor te kratke recenzije trdi, da Jovanovićeva razlaga uspe za ceno šibitve osrednje značilnosti prava, to je njegove normativne moči. Sam nasprotno trdi, da posedujemo pojmovna in opisna orodja, potrebna za zagovor robustnejšega pojmovanja mednarodnega prava, kot takega, ki naslovnikom ponuja tehtnih razlogov za ravnanje.Fil: Chehtman, Alejandro Eduardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; Argentin

Social validation influences individuals’ judgments about ownership

In all domains, from informal to formal, there are conflicts about property and ownership which resolution demands consideration of alleged claims from more than one party. In this work we asked adults (N = 359) to judge cases in which a character held a property claim over an item, but is challenged by a second character who holds a different, subsequent claim over it. The specific goal of this work is to investigate how the resolution of such conflicts depends on the social endorsement of ownership claims. To achieve this aim, we designed variations of conflictive situations over property in which we manipulated details regarding the knowledge of the second agent of other third-parties about the first agent’s actions. In essence, our questions were: if an agent claims ownership of something which has a previous property claim on (1) does it matter whether said agent knew of the first’s agent actions or not? And (2) does it matter whether third parties were aware or notified of the first one’s claim? The results confirm that adults resolve the settling of property rights based not only on the nature of ownership claims but also on the social acknowledgment of such claims, in accordance with what is stipulated in legal systems worldwide. Participants considered the second character in the stories to hold a lesser right over the object under dispute when she knew of the first character’s claim. Participants also considered that the first character’s claim was reinforced when there were witnesses for her actions, but not when third parties were merely communicated of such actions. This is the first study to our knowledge that studies how social validation of ownership claims drives adults’ judgments on property claims.Fil: Casiraghi, Leandro Pablo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; ArgentinaFil: Faigenbaum, Gustavo. Universidad Autónoma de Entre Ríos. Facultad de Humanidades Artes y Ciencias Sociales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Chehtman, Alejandro Eduardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. University Torcuato Di Tella; ArgentinaFil: Sigman, Mariano. University Torcuato Di Tella; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Respuesta a Ferrante y Gullco

Respuestás de Alejandro Chehtman a propósito de lo comentarios de Hernán Gullco y Marcelo Ferrante sobre el libro del primero "The Philosophical Foundations of Extraterritorial Punishment (Oxford University Press, 2011)"

The morality of extraterritorial punishment.

This thesis provides a philosophical account of the morality of extraterritorial punishment. The introduction clarifies the methodology by putting forward an analytical account of moral rights and endorsing the interest-based theory of rights, and presents a normative appraisal of the moral significance of political boundaries. Chapter 1 presents an innovative interest-based justification for the right to punish. Chapter 2 examines the extraterritorial scope of this right to punish with regards to domestic offences. It argues that the justification here advocated is the best suited to account for the strong intuition that the right to punish should be primarily territorial in scope, and provides a critique of the principles for states' power to punish offences committed extraterritorially currently in force under international law. The next part of the thesis focuses on extraterritoriality in the context of international criminal law. Chapter 3 argues that the defining feature of the concept of an international crime is that it warrants conferring upon some extraterritorial body the power to punish their perpetrators regardless of the nationality of both offender and victim. Chapter 4 provides a fresh look at universal and international jurisdiction, i.e., at the theoretical explanation for the proposition that every state should have the right to punish international crimes and the scope of the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. Chapter 5 provides a theory of legitimate authority to punish offenders. It relies on an innovative application of the influential service conception of authority to this specific question and permits a philosophical examination of issues such as show trials, victor's justice, tu quoque, and trials in absentia or against defendants who have been abducted abroad. A conclusion summarizes the central findings of the thesis and suggests possible avenues for future research

Dismissing appeals on formal grounds: The case of the Argentine Supreme Court

Las Cortes Supremas generalmente se debaten por encontrar un balance entre corregir errores de tribunales inferiores y ser el intérprete último de la constitución. El tiempo y recursos invertidos en corregir errores limitan la capacidad de ofrecer mejores interpretaciones constitucionales. Algunas cortes buscan racionalizar el proceso de apelación a través de la inadmisión de aquellas apelaciones que no hubieran cumplido con los requisitos formales establecidos. Nuestro estudio contribuye a la creciente literatura comparada sobre Cortes Supremas al investigar la duración de casos cuyas apelaciones contienen errores formales en la Corte Suprema de la Nación Argentina. Nuestro trabajo muestra que la inadmisión de este tipo de apelaciones no ha resultado en un manejo eficiente de los casos ni ha incrementado la cantidad de sentencias producidas por la Corte Suprema. Adicionalmente, el análisis multivariable muestra que ciertas características, como la materia subyacente de la apelación o el tipo de error formal cometido, afectan el tiempo que transcurre hasta la inadmisión de la apelación.High courts typically struggle to find the right balance between its error correction function and its final interpretation of constitutional clauses. The more time and resources spent in error correction limits the greater is the ability to offer improvements in constitutional interpretation. Some courts seek to streamline the appeals’ process by dismissing appeals which have not complied with certain formal requirements. Our study contributes to the growing comparative literature on High Court docket management by investigating the time to case disposition of appeals with formal errors in the Argentine Supreme Court. We show that this type of appeals’ dismissal has not resulted in efficient case duration or in an increase of CSJN’s output. Furthermore, the multivariate analysis shows that several case characteristics, such as the appeals’ subject matter or the type of formal error, affect appeal duration.Fil: Muro, Sergio. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. Escuela de Derecho; ArgentinaFil: Chehtman, Alejandro Eduardo. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. Escuela de Derecho; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Méndez, Jorge Silva. Banco Mundial; Estados UnidosFil: Durán, Nelson Amaya. Banco Mundial; Estados Unido

How distinctive is philosophers’ intuition talk?

The word “intuition” is one frequently used in philosophy. It is often assumed that the way in which philosophers use the word, and others like it, is very distinctive. This claim has been subjected to little empirical scrutiny, however. This article presents the first steps in a qualitative analysis of the use of intuition talk in the academy. It presents the findings of two preliminary empirical studies. The first study examines the use of intuition talk in spoken academic English. The second examines the use of intuition talk in written academic English. It considers what these studies tell us about the distinctiveness of philosophical language and methods and considers some implications for evaluative and ameliorative methodology

Should states have the right to punish municipal offences committed abroad?

This paper provides a philosophical critique of the principles that currently govern extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction under public international law. I start by outlining an interest-based justification for the right to punish offenders which, I suggest, is sensitive to the territorial dimension of the criminal law. On its basis, I argue that the nationality and passive personality principles have hollow foundations; by contrast, this justification fully explains what makes the territoriality and protective principles morally sound. Finally, this paper takes issue with the two most influential justifications for legal punishment available in the literature, i.e., retribution and deterrence. It argues that when pressed against the issue of extraterritoriality, they are committed to conferring upon states universal criminal jurisdiction for municipal offences. Although this does not prove them wrong, it is an implication that few of their supporters would be happy to endorse

¿Es posible saber si un testigo dice la verdad?: a propósito de ''Detecting lies and deceit, pitfalls and opportunities'' de Aldert Vrij

El libro de Aldert Vrij, "Detecting lies and deceit. Pitfalls and opportunities", es una de las referencias obligadas en estudios sobre la capacidad de determinar la veracidad o mendacidad de una declaración...Fil: Chehtman, Alejandro Eduardo. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. Escuela de Derecho; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin