Deduction, Legal Reasoning, and the Rule of Law. Book Review Of: Rhetoric and the Rule of Law. a Theory of Legal Reasoning. by Neil McCormick

Book review: Rhetoric and the Rule of Law. A Theory of Legal Reasoning. By Neil MacCormick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. xvi + 287. Reviewed by: Torben Spaa

To whom does the law speak? Canvassing a neglected picture of law’s interpretive field

Among the most common strategies underlying the so-called indeterminacy thesis is the following two-step argument: (1) that law is an interpretive practice, and that evidently legal actors more generally hold different (and competing) theories of meaning, which lead to disagreements as to what the law says (that is, as to what the law is); (2) and that, as there is no way to establish the prevalence of one particular theory of meaning over the other, indeterminacy is pervasive in law. In this paper I offer some reflections to resist this trend. In particular I claim that a proper understanding of law as an authoritative communicative enterprise sheds new light on the relation between the functioning of the law and our theories of interpretation, leading to what can be considered a neglected conclusion: the centrality of the linguistic criterion of meaning in our juridical interpretive practices. In the first part of the chapter I discuss speech-act theory in the study of law, assessing its relevance between alternative options. Then I tackle the ‘to whom does the law speak?’ question, highlighting the centrality of lay-people for our juridical practices. Lastly, I examine the consequences of this neglected fact for our interpretive theories

Vilhelm Lundstedt’s ‘Legal Machinery’ and the Demise of Juristic Practice

This article aims to contribute to the academic debate on the general crisis faced by law schools and the legal professions by discussing why juristic practice is a matter of experience rather than knowledge. Through a critical contextualisation of Vilhelm Lundstedt’s thought under processes of globalisation and transnationalism, it is argued that the demise of the jurist’s function is related to law’s scientification as brought about by the metaphysical construction of reality. The suggested roadmap will in turn reveal that the current voiding of juristic practice and its teaching is part of the crisis regarding what makes us human

Kelsen's Metaethics

In this article, I argue, inter alia, that Kelsen’s mature view—as expressed in, and around the time of, the second edition of Reine Rechtslehre—was that of a metaethical relativist, and that the commitment to metaethical relativism was the reason why Kelsen defended democracy as well as tolerance in the shape of a constitutionally guaranteed freedom of thought. I also consider the possibility that in his post-1960 phase Kelsen abandoned metaethical relativism for moral fictionalism, but argue that, on the whole, a relativist interpretation of Kelsen’s late legal philosophy is to be preferred to a fictionalist interpretation.

O conceito de competência normativa

O presente artigo é uma tradução direta da língua inglesa elaborada por Felipe Oliveira de Sousa, estudante da Faculdade de Direito da Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC) e bolsista do programa PIBIC-UFC.Apresenta os diferentes significados de “competência”. Conceitua competência normativa e mostra a sua importância e uso aos advogados e filósofos do direito

The Canberra Plan and the Nature of Law

In this article, I shall consider a method for conceptual analysis which has been called the Canberra Plan and which might perhaps be conceived as an alternative approach to conceptual analysis in the classical sense. The Canberra Plan is not, however, aimed primarily at the elucidation of the relevant concept, but at the metaphysical question of identifying the descriptive (or natural or physical) property that corresponds to the concept.[1] The idea of the Canberra Plan is, more specifically, (a) to clarify the import of the concept by reference to the role the concept plays in a network of concepts, principles, and claims, and (b) to investigate and see what, if any, descriptive property corresponds to the concept thus analyzed. What I want to do in this article, then, is first to introduce the Canberra Plan and give some consideration to its advantages and disadvantages and, secondly, to apply it to the concept of law, in order not only to clarify the import of this concept, but also to find out what, if any, descriptive property corresponds to the concept. The question of what descriptive property, if any, corresponds to the concept of law should be of considerable interest to jurisprudents, not only because the meta-ethical question of whether legal properties are descriptive, or even natural or physical, is generally interesting, but also because the existence of such descriptive (or natural or physical) legal properties is precisely what is asserted by legal positivists through the so-called social thesis, which has it that we determine what the law is using factual criteria. That is to say, if the analyst succeeds in establishing that the property of being law is a descriptive property, he would seem to have offered at least some support for the social thesis of legal positivism and, therefore, for legal positivism. In order to investigate this interesting question, I shall carry out a Canberra-style analysis of the concept of law, and I shall argue, tentatively, (1) that X is law if, and only if, (i) X is a relation between (a) a system of norms all of which can be traced back to one of several recognized sources of law that can be handled on the basis of exclusively factual considerations, and (b) an organization that is constituted and regulated by the norms of the system and whose task it is to interpret and apply these norms, (ii) X aspires to regulate social life in general, (iii) X is non-optional, and (iv) X claims to trump competing normative systems. In addition, I shall argue, equally tentatively, (2a) that the property of being law is precisely the descriptive property that satisfies the conditions (i)-(iv), (2b) that this property is a role property, not a realizer property, and (2c) that there is very little to be said about the legal realizer property on a general level and that the legal realizer property differs in this regard from moral and mental realizer properties. I shall, however, also argue (3a) that the analyst who applies the Canberra Plan to the concept of law will almost certainly find it very difficult to come up with a collection of sufficiently rich analytic platitudes, especially what Frank Jackson calls input and output clauses, (3b) that he is not likely to get much help from the idea of mature legal thinking (introduced here as an analog to Jackson’s idea of mature folk morality), and (3c) that the so-called permutation problem, which is very problematic, will arise as a result of the above-mentioned lack of input and output clauses. And I shall therefore argue (4) that, as things stand, the Canberra Plan will not help us clarify the nature of law or lend support to the strong social thesis of legal positivism

A challenge to Bix's interpretation of Kelsen and Hart's views on the normativity of law

Brian Bix discusses questions of legal normativity, arguing (1) that Hans Kelsen’s theory of the basic norm is best understood as saying that a person may choose to presuppose the basic norm in order to interpret the actions of legal officials normatively; (2) that H. L. A. Hart is best understood as espousing a sui generis view of legal normativity; and (3) that Hart’s view is preferable to the rather popular view that law makes some sort of moral claim. I accept (1) but think it is rather trivial. I find (2) plausible but the view itself problematic, and am therefore skeptical of (3)

Fahlbeck om de lege ferenda-forskning

Reinhold Fahlbeck diskuterar i ett kort och kärnfullt inlägg i Juridisk tidskrift frågan huruvida det är möjligt att forska – att bedriva vetenskap – de lege ferenda, till skillnad från de lege lata, d.v.s. att forska om hur gällande rätt bör se ut, inte om hur den faktiskt ser ut. Han menar själv (med vissa reservationer) att de lege ferenda-undersökningar inte kan betraktas som forskning men förklarar inte riktigt varför. Mitt intryck av hans argumentation är dock att han helt enkelt anser att värdeomdömen i allmänhet och moraliska omdömen i synnerhet är subjektiva till sin natur och att det är detta som gör att de lege ferenda-forskning inte kan betraktas som forskning. Han säger t.ex. i slutet av artikeln (s. 6) att de lege ferenda-förslagen endast kan värderas utifrån överväganden om hur effektivt de kan tillgodose det förändringsbehov som utgör avhandlingens (av Fahlbeck förutsatta) utgångspunkt, d.v.s. endast såvitt gäller frågan om relationen mellan mål och medel (se avsnitt 3 nedan.). Jag kommer att hävda dels (1A) att Fahlbecks krav att forskningsresultatet skall nödvändiggöra de lege ferenda-förslaget, för att det skall vara fråga omforskning, är allt för starkt, något som enligt min mening vinner stöd av den omständigheten att detta krav också skulle utesluta de lege lata-forskning från forskningens område, dels (1B) att Fahlbecks egna krav på de lege ferenda-forskning, vilka såvitt jag kan förstå är normativa, verkar förutsätta just det som Fahlbeck tycks anse vara falskt, nämligen att värdeomdömen, inklusive moraliska omdömen, kan vara objektiva. Jag kommer också att hävda (2) att den yttersta anledningen till att de lege ferenda-forskning inte är möjlig är att den innefattar värdeomdömen, typiskt sett moraliska omdömen, att sådana omdömen ärsubjektiva (=inte objektiva) och att man bör skilja mellan olika sätt på vilka värdeomdömen kan vara subjektiva, eftersom dessa skillnader kan ha en viss betydelse för den juridiska analysen