Law and philosophy

The concept of right stands at the very center of our legal universe. An imaginary alternative legal universe might have similar legal norms to ours, except that they are centered on the concept of duty. Is there any significant difference between these two legal universes? The Hohfeldian assumption of complete correlativity between rights and duties might imply that the difference between these two universes is merely a matter of rhetoric. This article, however, argues that a rights-based legal world would presumably be significantly different from a legal world based upon duties. For this purpose, the article examines the way in which contradictory norms are resolved. A rights-based system decides cases of contradictory norms according to a process that is different from that used by a duty-based system. The article is devoted to examining the roots of this difference, its significance and its social implications. Alongside the discussion of the classical and modern legal sources from the Western legal tradition, the article contains a comparative discussion of Jewish law sources, which demonstrates a typical example of a duty-based legal system.

Resumo: Objetivando realizar uma análise lítero-jurídica da obra O mercador de Veneza, de William Shakespeare, no sentido de aproximar Direito e Literatura, parte-se de uma revisão crítica no que diz respeito à genericidade teatral do texto e aos seus símbolos culturais e psicológicos, para situar a problemática jurídica da interpretação no processo de julgamento do contrato firmado entre Bassânio, Shylock e Antônio, estudada à luz dos institutos civis do Direito Romano. Ao longo da reflexão, suscita-se uma série de questões atinentes à obra, tais como o antissemitismo, a intolerância à homossexualidade, a validade do contrato e do julgamento, etc.; constata-se o esvaziamento da questão hermenêutica, transmudada em problemas políticos.
Palavras-chave: Literatura; Direito Romano; O Mercador de Veneza; Hermenêutica.

Resumen: Con el fin de llevar a cabo un análisis literario-jurídico de la obra El mercader de Venecia, de William Shakespeare, acercándose Derecho y Literatura, partiendo de un revisión crítica con respecto a la generalidad del texto teatral y sus símbolos culturales y psicológicos, se discute la problemática jurídica de la interpretación en el proceso de juzgamiento del contrato firmado entre Bassanio, Shylock y Antonio, estudiada a la luz de los institutos civiles del Derecho Romano. A lo largo de la reflexión, surge una serie de cuestiones relacionadas con el texto literario, tales como el antisemitismo, la intolerancia a la homosexualidad, la validez del contrato y del juicio, etc.; se observa el vaciado de la cuestión hermenéutica, transmutada en problemas políticos.
Palabras clave: Literatura; Derecho Romano; El mercader de Venecia; Hermenéutica.

More than a century ago, a great revolution occurred in Iran, the fundamental aim of which was to establish a rule of law system. Accordingly, the concept of law has been one of the most essential though challenging concepts of the constitutionalist movement in the country. This issue is so significant that we may seek the root of the Iranian constitutional crisis in the failure of providing a clear and workable concept of law. A serious impediment in this regard was the old concept and system of Shar`, which prima facie left no room for law.Sharìatist thinkers took two approaches to the relationship between law and Shar`: compatibility and incompatibility. Not only did the compatibility approach believe in the possibility of combination and sometimes identity ofSharì and legal rules, it finally gave the upper hand to law and its requirements. One of the fundamental disputes related to the legislating authority.Sharìatists ultimately embraced legislation by the human being. Nevertheless, this brought about controversies and debates on the last prophet-hoodness of Muhammad (pbuh), religious innovation, and rational preference. This paper shall analyse the concept of law from the perspective of Sharìatist thinkers living during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution era, on the basis of their works and the related documents. This analysis will lay the historical and theoretical ground for the similar and still unresolved problem under the legal system established after the Islamic Revolution in the Country.

Hart and Honoré’s work on causation in the law – first published in 1959 – represented a major turn in contemporary reflection on causation. Causation in the law defended an original contextualist view of causation, which claims for the existence of special common sense principles governing singular causal judgments in human affairs, and emphasizes the special role of human intervention in causal chains. This work was also the starting point for Honoré’s more recent work in the theory of responsibility, focused on «outcome responsibility». Outcome responsibility is a concept distinct from «fault responsibility», built by Honoré against the background of the contemporary debate on the moral foundation of tort law. It derives from a combination of theses on causation, personal rights, moral luck, and the importance of the recognition of human capacity of agency in the formation of an individual personality.

Proponendo un'analisi dell'evoluzione storico-filosofica delle concezioni di proprietà, l'obiettivo che mi pongo in questa tesi è di cogliere la logica del rapporto fra una teoria individuale ed una sociale che, a turno, hanno politicamente prevalso l'una sull'altra. Alla luce di queste considerazioni, il fine sarà di verificare in che modo, nell'immediato dopoguerra, il bilanciamento fra queste due dimensioni abbia trovato cristallizzazione nel compromesso scolpito nell'art. 42 della Costituzione italiana. E soprattutto, in che modo possa essere interpretato. Per farlo mi sono servita del pensiero di John Locke. La tesi si sviluppa in sei capitoli. Nel primo ho illustrato sinteticamente l'evolversi della concezione di proprietà all'interno del quadro storico, facendo riferimento al pensiero greco, romano, patristico e infine, a quello contrattualista in età moderna, soffermandomi su Hobbes e Pufendorf. Nel secondo, ho analizzato nello specifico la teoria di proprietà avanzata da John Locke, primo filosofo che ne ha determinato un fondamento morale: il lavoro. Da quest'ultimo poi, Locke fa derivare anche i limiti etici e naturali del possesso. Le tesi lockiane saranno però oggetto di numerose controversie: c'è chi individua nei suoi passi il fondamento morale dell'accumulazione capitalistica e chi, al contrario, ne sostiene un'interpretazione comunitario-collettivistica. Insomma, Locke è un pensatore liberal-borghese o, attraverso il riferimento al lavoro, può essere considerato un anticipatore del pensiero socialista? Ho tentato di delineare questa problematica nel terzo capitolo, contrapponendo la visione critica di Macpherson a quella di Tully. Nel quarto capitolo mi sono soffermata sull'etica del lavoro e sulla sua duplice funzione: da un lato base per un discorso a difesa del sistema capitalistico e della proprietà privata, dall'altro riferimento per le rivendicazioni sociali che ne favorivano l'abolizione. Proprio per questo i discorsi di Locke possono essere così ambigui. Anche nel caso del lavoro dunque, ritorna la contrapposizione fra una visione individualistica ed una collettiva, ma il confine sembra farsi pian piano più sottile. Sottile o meno, nel dopoguerra si fano sentire le voci di economisti e filosofi che, prendendo Locke a modello, hanno proposto teorie di un estremo liberalismo. È il caso delle soluzioni di "Stato minimo" proposte da Nozick e Coase, rispettivamente filosofo ed economista. In questo capitolo, il quinto, ne ho delineato le linee teoriche generali, per poi proporne una critica. Infine si giunge al il sesto capitolo con cui si conclude la tesi. Qui mi focalizzo sul caso italiano: la scrittura di una Carta Costituzionale, su questi stessi temi, per molti versi assolutamente innovativa.

Paternalism is widely viewed as presumptively justifiable for children but morally problematic for adults. The standard explanation for this distinction is that children lack capacities relevant to the justifiability of paternalism. I argue that this explanation is more difficult to defend than typically assumed. If paternalism is often justified when needed to keep children safe from the negative consequences of their poor choices, then when adults make choices leading to the same negative consequences, what makes paternalism less justified? It seems true that ordinary adults have capacities enabling them to promote their interests in ways most children lack. This can explain why paternalism is more often justified towards children than adults. What is not explained, however, is why paternalism would be justifiable for children, but not adults, when neither possess the relevant interest-promoting capacities-exactly the cases when paternalism towards adults might be considered. I argue that this dilemma undercuts capacities-based explanations for the belief that childhood is distinctively relevant for the permissibility of paternalism. I then address defenses of both consequentialist and deontological versions of the capacities-based explanation. Absent this capacities-based explanation, I argue that the intuition that less demanding justificatory standards apply to paternalism when directed at children than when directed towards adults presents unresolved problems for egalitarians.

Jurisprudence is thus the study and theory of law. Scholars of jurisprudence, or legal theorists (including legal philosophers and social theorists of law), try to assign a deeper understanding of the nature of law, of legal reasoning, legal systems and of legal institutions.

In this paper, we are concentrating on the major and most important schools of jurisprudence. These schools are

1. analytical,
2. sociological,
3. historical,
4. philosophical and
5. realist schools.

Thèse de doctorat transdisciplinaire, mention "philosophie et sciences sociales" (LIER-FYT (ex-CENJ-Centre Yan Thomas) - EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales), soutenue le 22 mai 2019.

French and English abstract included in the thesis.

En partant de la « crise environnementale », ce travail empirique et théorique interroge deux notions qui structurent les études environnementales et la philosophie de la technique : la « conscience écologique » et la « rationalité instrumentale ». Il met en œuvre une réflexion sur les rapports entre philosophie et sciences sociales et sur l’interdisciplinarité qui caractériseraient tant la « postmodernité » que le « règne de la technique ». Pour ce faire, il s’appuie sur des sources diverses (juridiques, politiques, médiatiques et académiques) et plusieurs expériences d’observation participante de dispositifs de démocratie participative (notamment au Haut Conseil des Biotechnologies). En prolongeant la critique du paradigme d’une « Modernité réflexive », la première partie analyse la problématisation de l’ « environnement » en France (1870-1945) et en Allemagne (1900-1945). Cette généalogie de la gouvernementalité environnementale et de l’expertise conduit à interroger l’opposition entre « anthropocentrisme » et « biocentrisme » et à reconceptualiser l’idée d’une « prise de conscience environnementale ». Nous concevrons plutôt l’ « environnement » comme un agencement composite, variable, hétérogène et potentiellement contradictoire. Dès lors, nous substituons au triangle conceptuel « technique-environnement-Modernité » un losange « technique-environnement-Modernité-nazisme ». Outre le rôle de la technique dans l’Holocauste et le statut d’Heidegger, le nazisme conduit en effet à s’interroger sur l’équivocité des appels à vivre « en harmonie » avec la nature et à « maîtriser la technique » et sur l’idée qu’on pourrait déterminer un « rapport occidental à la nature ». Dans notre seconde partie, le commentaire d’Heidegger puis de l’école de Francfort permet d’analyser la notion de « rationalité instrumentale » et l’idée selon laquelle l’anthropocentrisme serait la cause de la crise environnementale. En faisant appel tant à l’histoire de la philosophie qu’à la problématisation de cas historiques et juridiques, nous analysons ainsi des problèmes communs à la critique de la technique et à l’éthique environnementale, dont celui de « conversion écologique » ou d’indétermination des techniques. Nous y traiterons en particulier du projet de démocratie technique et environnementale et de ses limites. Il s’agit de penser autrement notre rapport à l’environnement, aux techniques et aux sciences, mais aussi la manière dont le droit et la politique les régulent et peuvent faire face à la crise environnementale.

The aim of this article is to analyse a short period in the life of Karl Marx when he was a student at the Law Faculty at the University of Bonn, and then at the Law Faculty at the University of Berlin. During the period of these, ultimately uncompleted, legal studies, his attention was absorbed by the notions of "state" and "law", the analysis of which in his later work - as a philosopher, economist and revolutionary activist - was an important element of his academic delibarations. This article therefore analyses issues related to Karl Marx's first steps as a young student of law. The author  presents selected threads of Karl Marx's statements, mainly those concerning the political and legal system, which  appeared in his publications, both during the period in question and later.

Adam Smith closes the first chapter to Theory of Moral Sentiments, 'Of Sympathy', with a harmless enough assertion: 'We sympathize even with the dead'.  Death is not a topic that much interests Smith in Theory of Moral Sentiments. With the exception of a few miscellaneous thoughts in the text, the one paragraph Smith devotes to it is the extent of his interest. It is, however, a matter of interest in his Glasgow lectures on jurisprudence. To the extent we wish to observe the rights of the dead, how far may we extend these rights without infringing upon the rights of the living?  Which is the question: what are the demands the dead may make upon the living?

This legal research based on effects from Constitution Number 12 Year 2012 About Higher Eduaction on Indonesia education systems includings autonomy on academic and non academic aspects for University. Universitas Gadjah Mada is one of university that have a legal entity as autonomy university than have to implemant the requierments of administrations includings student organization intra university. The advanced development of social science in modern day need more holistic aspect to answers the narrations and the effects of Constitution Number 12 Year 2012 About Higher Eduaction for student organizations intra university administrations. This legal research is based on data and normative empiric facts from law norm, and empiric fatcs based on practice field than will elaborated with social critical theories to answer the main cause of this legal research. Based on data from the research, there are four conclutions. The first is based on the facts and critical analysis of Constitution Number 12 Year 2012 About Higher Eduaction the law instruments is not free from the values because the Constitution Number 12 Year 2012 About Higher Eduaction have a relations with new paradigms on adminsitration that call new public management and this facts change many things includings the structures of univeristy administration systems based on accountingsm and coorpratism. The problems came when the student organization intra univeristy is under university control to reach the main goals of university. the conditions is very complicated because in the same time there is a phenomenon of soft power abbused to silence the student organization intra university with the administrations mechanism based on Constitution Number 12 Year 2012 About Higher Eduaction.

Since the end of the American Civil War, scholars have debated the efficacy of various models of community economic development, or CED. Historically, this debate has tracked one of two approaches: place-based models of CED, seeking to stimulate community development through market-driven economic growth programs, and people-based models of CED, focused on the removal of structural barriers to social and economic mobility that prevent human flourishing. More recently, scholars and policymakers have turned to a third model from the impact
investing community—the social impact bond, or SIB. The SIB model of CED ostensibly finds a middle ground by leveraging funding from private impact investors to finance social welfare programs within marginalized communities. SIBs seemingly answer the call of local government law scholars of the New Regionalists movement who advocate for governmental mechanisms that facilitate regional cooperation, address equity concerns, and respect local government autonomy. However, this Article argues that the SIB model of impact investing will struggle to advance metropolitan equity due to its grounding in the politics of neoliberalism.

After highlighting limitations of the SIB, this Article links contemporary debates about CED theory to historical contestations within the black community about economically-oriented racial uplift strategies. Placing historical figures, such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, in conversation with more contemporary theorists of political philosophy, this Article offers an alternative conceptual framework of CED. Termed justice-based CED, this framing distinguishes a typology of social change that places democracy at the epicenter of the development debate and points toward the political principles of the solidarity economy as guideposts for law reform. The justice-based approach rests upon three core values: social solidarity, economic democracy, and solidarity economy. Taken together, this perspective reflects a vision of political morality that embodies one of America’s most foundational democratic values—human moral dignity.

Ronald Dworkin’s contributions to legal philosophy have been subject to severe criticism in recent years. Other legal philosophers call his arguments “deflected or discredited,” laced with “philosophical confusions,” and “deeply embedded” mistakes. As Brian Leiter writes, “[t]he only good news in the story about Dworkin’s impact on law and philosophy is that most of the field declined to follow the Dworkinian path . . . .”

This Article endeavors to show that, far from an effort beset with primitive errors, Dworkin’s challenge to legal positivism in the opening pages of his seminal work was neither misguided nor trivial. Rather, Dworkin’s challenge remains as important and thought-provoking today as it was when he first set it down. His challenge, though straightforward, has never been satisfactorily answered. Rather than grapple with Dworkin’s argument, legal philosophers have either misunderstood or trivialized his insights in the decades since. But there is a reason H.L.A. Hart, one of Dworkin’s examiners at Oxford, saved his jurisprudence examination before ever having reason to believe that Dworkin would become the primary opponent to legal positivism. Hart’s challenge—the argument from theoretical disagreement—still burns bright nearly a quarter-century on.

Furthermore, this Article seeks to explain why legal positivism’s inability to preserve the face value of theoretical disagreement makes it improbable that legal positivism offers an adequate descriptive account of the nature of law. It also endeavors to outline why this deficiency is so immensely important. To accept the legitimacy of theoretical disagreement is accept that to know what the law is one must know something about the moral and political culture in which that law resides.

Since Andrew Carnegie penned his famous Gospel of Wealth in 1889, corporate philanthropists have championed considerable public good around the world, investing in a wide range of social programs addressing a diversity of public issues, from poverty to healthcare to criminal justice. Nevertheless, the problem of “the Rich and the Poor,” as termed by Andrew Carnegie in his famous essay, remains unsolved. Socially conscious investors have recently called for America to reimagine a new “gospel of wealth”, one that not only grapples with the what of social injustice, but also explores the how and the why of systemic social and economic inequality. An emerging social finance tool, the social impact bond (“SIB”), has been praised as a promising platform that can help solve many of our social challenges by targeting impact investments toward traditionally underfunded social welfare programs.

This Article sets forth a critical examination of the new SIB model, highlighting some of the opportunities for the social finance tool to promote social impact, while also revealing several of its challenges that may hinder its broader adoption in communities across America. In the process, this Article exposes key flaws inherent in the design of the SIB model, including its neoliberal emphasis on market-based economic development strategies and its disregard for the primary role of government in the protection and advancement of the public good. It concludes by calling for a more progressive economic development framework to guide the implementation of the SIB model, one that can help development practitioners, philanthropists, and impact investors wrestle with the deficiencies of our global capitalist economic system and overcome the entrenched systemic barriers to economic justice in America.

J. Doomen and M. van Schaik (eds.), Religious Ideas in Liberal Democratic States. Lanham, MD/Boulder, CO/New York, NY/London: Lexington Books (Rowman & Littlefield), 2021. Editor (with Mirjam van Schaik). I wrote a chapter (pp. 85-104) and co-authored the general introduction (pp. vii-xix).

Courts and lawmakers trust psychiatric expertise when making judicial and public policy decisions concerning mental health, but is this trust well placed? This paper adopts a philosophy of science approach informed by medical research to evaluating the validity of psychiatric classification. This provides the basis for an interdisciplinary critical analysis of civil commitment law and use of psychiatric expert witnesses in light of legal evidence standards. This analysis demonstrates that involuntary civil commitment as it now stands is incompatible with broader due process and civil rights concerns and affords an unjustifiable evidentiary status to psychiatric diagnosis.

This essay on choice of law (private international law) appears in the second edition of the Blackwell Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory, edited by Dennis Patterson. It is a revision of an entry on the same topic in the first edition of the book. The essay focuses on the epic battle over the course of the last century between two very different traditions - classical choice of law, articulated most completely by Joseph Beale in the 1930s, and modernist choice of law, which inspired a massive and still controversial revolution in choice of law thinking. The essay isolates eight distinct jurisprudentially significant premises of classicism, including territorialism, a commitment to a regime of rules, and a conception of law and legal rights that I have called “vestedness.” It then discusses the modernist challenges to most, but significantly not all, of those premises. It also emphasize, however, the degree to which the eight pillars of the classical tradition are actually conceptually independent, and could, at least in principle, be mixed and matched in various combinations and in the service of very different account of choice of law enterprise. Finally, the essay turns to other debates, both within the classical and modernist traditions separately and transcending the differences between them.

Keywords: conflict of laws, choice of law, private international law, philsophy of law, legal theory, jurisprudence, territorialism, vestedness, legal pluralism, rules and standards, marriage, same-sex marriage.

Marciani, B., Sotomayor, E. & Cornejo, L. (2020). Justicia Derecho y mercado. Una investigación sobre el Análisis Económico del Derecho en el Perú. Lima-Puno: Cicaj PUCP | Zela

El presente capítulo tiene como propósito discutir, desde la filosofía jurídica, las debilidades en las objeciones al paternalismo formuladas desde el análisis económico del Derecho (AED). El debate público sobre la regulación de alimentos procesados y alimentación saludable para combatir la epidemia de sobrepeso y obesidad en el Perú (2012-2019) es empleado para ejemplificar varios puntos de esta investigación.

Se concluye que los diversos argumentos antipaternalistas adolecen de algunas deficiencias. En primer lugar, se encuentra el excesivo valor y confianza en la autonomía de los individuos para ser los mejores jueces de sus propios intereses, incluido el problemático subjetivismo moral adyacente. En segundo lugar, se muestran las deficiencias de la posición antigualitaria que rechaza los esfuerzos públicos por destinar recursos para proteger a las personas de ellas mismas. En tercer lugar, se resalta la desproporcionada confianza en el mecanismo de mercado como alternativa al paternalismo, que no toma en cuenta las particularidades que estos puedan tener en ciertos servicios o venta de productos, como es el caso de los mercados para menores de edad. En cuarto lugar, se encuentra el excesivo escepticismo general sobre la capacidad de los funcionarios para diseñar e implementar medidas paternalistas idóneas. En quinto lugar, se destaca la ausencia de una posición que reconozca sistemáticamente los factores diversos que explican los problemas públicos que requieran de medidas paternalistas, además de otras formas de intervención. Finalmente, en sexto lugar, se muestran las dificultades de cuestionar la idoneidad y necesidad de las medidas paternalistas, lo que incluye una lectura crítica al test de proporcionalidad.

Este capítulo también incluye una pequeña caracterización del Derecho de salud pública y de una definición abreviada de paternalismo en salud pública. El objetivo es ordenar y ubicar la discusión sobre los alimentos procesados, el paternalismo y el AED con mayores elementos de juicio.

With numerous shared aspects, philosophy and law are two distinct but closely interrelated disciplines. With that said, the present paper aims to address the impact of Lockean philosophical inclinations on the process of the US Constitution development by means of textual and historical analysis. In so doing, attention is directed towards the influence of Lockean philosophy upon the Founding Fathers, particularly through scrutinizing the writings of the figuresplaying leading roles in the procedure of drafting the Constitution. Locke’s natural approach to law, and to citizen rights and liberties in particular, is among the most outstanding spheres of influence put upon the examined figures. From adoption of the contract theories for justifying their break from England, to taking a natural approach in their dealing with the rights to life, liberty, and property, the Founding Fathers have been under influence of Locke’s epistemological principles and conceptions. This study concludes based upon the investigated materials and historical context that the American Founding Fathers have extensively employed Lockean notions at legal philosophy level in drafting the Constitution.

I giudizi di imputabilità devono basarsi sulla valutazione delle capacità generali dell’imputato al momento dell’azione e non della sua “libertà metafisica” rispetto al compimento della particolare azione incriminata. Questo fatto pare troppo spesso trascurato nella letteratura “scientifica”e nei discorsi degli operatori del diritto sull’imputabilità, spesso incentrati sul confuso problema della libertà del soggetto rispetto alle cause delcomportamento, anziché sul discorso sulle sue capacità. Tale spostamento d’attenzione non ha nessuna seria giustificazione teorica e può peraltro incidere negativamente sull’equità delle sentenze, privando i giudici di criteri di giudizio affidabili e consentendo l’attribuzione di un peso eccessivo alle opinioni degli “esperti”.

Public interest is one of the fundamental concepts of politics, law and moralitiy. However, due to various uses of the concept and theoretical controversies arising from the said uses, meaning of the concept is not clear. In this paper, we shall deal with the meaning, characteristic features and instances of the concept. This dealing is based on a basic presupposition: public interest is the common interest of all members of the society. Indeed, public interest is “interest of the collective life”. Therefore, public interest relates to the basis and very existence of the collective life and, hence, is of a collective, minimalist (minimum requirement of justice), instrumentalist and morally indifferent nature.

Visa Kurki’s A Theory of Legal Personhood is an exciting new volume in the Oxford Legal Philosophy series that successfully undertakes the ambitious project its title promises. It offers a workable and unifying account of legal personhood that tracks contemporary advancements in analytical jurisprudence whilst masterfully incorporating a long-neglected subject into that broad tradition. Its direct and rigorous confrontation of many longstanding puzzles should be welcomed not only in the analytical jurisprudence tradition but also by practitioners and scholars who have been vexed by this thorny concept. Read the published version here:
https://www.modernlawreview.co.uk/november-2020/afrouzi-kurki/

Law involves institutions rooted in the history of a society that evolve in relation to surrounding social, psychological, cultural, economic, political, technological, and ecological influences. Law must be understood naturalistically, historically, and holistically. In my usage, naturalism views humans as social animals with natural traits and requirements, historicism presents law as historical manifestations that change over time, and holism sees law within social surroundings. These insights inform my perspective in A Realistic Theory of Law. This essay, written for a symposium on the book, draws on the notion of emergence to elaborate the implications of naturalism, historicism, and holism for legal theory, further developing ideas sketched in the Conclusion of the book. Emergent phenomena arise in connection with objects or agents whose interactions produce qualitatively new features not found in its constituent parts. Two senses of emergence are contained in this idea: the e...

One who aspires to become a public servant should respect the law and shall not circumvent it in any way. I am with Justice Chico-Nazaria in her dissenting opinion. The questions involve in this case are: 1. is the petitioner a " candidate " during the time she did the motorcade and 2. If then, should she be liable in violation Sec. 80 of the Omnibus Election of illegal campaign. A cardinal rule in statutory construction is that when the law is clear and free from any doubt or ambiguity, there is no room for construction or interpretation. There is only room for application (1). As the statute is clear, plain, and free from ambiguity, it must be given its literal meaning and applied without attempted interpretation. This is what is known as the plain-meaning rule or verba legis. It is expressed in the maxim, index animi sermo, or speech is the index of intention. Furthermore, there is the maxim verba legis non est recedendum, or from the words of a statute there should be no departure. [ 2 ] Sec. 79 (a) of the Omnibus Election Code clearly states: a. The term "candidate" refers to any person aspiring for or seeking an elective public office, who has filed a certificate of candidacy by himself or through an accredited political party, aggroupment, or coalition of parties; Citing to the factual antecedents of the case: Andanar claimed that on 29 March 2007 a day before the start of the authorized campaign period on 30 March 2007 Penera and her partymates went around the different barangays in Sta. Monica, announcing their candidacies and requesting the people to vote for them on the day of the elections. Attached to the Petition were the Affidavits of individuals who witnessed the said incident. Penera alone filed an Answer to the Petition on 19 April 2007, averring that the charge of premature campaigning was not true. Although Penera admitted that a motorcade did take place, she explained that it was simply in accordance with the usual practice in nearby cities and provinces, where the filing of certificates of candidacy (COCs) was preceded by a motorcade, which dispersed soon after the completion of such filing. In fact, Penera claimed, in the motorcade held by her political party, no person made any speech, not even any of the candidates.

Resumo: “O círculo de giz caucasiano”, peça do dramaturgo alemão Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), é aqui analisada sob a ótica do conflito entre ética e política no que diz respeito à justiça. Trabalha-se a ambiguidade conceitual e objetiva da justiça a partir da antinomia grega fundamental entre Têmis e Díke, que se desdobra – sem se reduzir – nas oposições: legal-igual, formal-material, humano-divino, etc. Para resolver a aporia da justiça injusta, não-equidade, recorre-se ao conceito de Ethos como realidade geradora, integradora e avaliadora de todo o agir humano, numa perspectiva abstrata, e à visão dialética da histórica, de cunho marxista, como processo onde se dá a conquista e a efetividade do justo. Por fim, discorre-se acerca do papel da hermenêutica em Azdak, personagem da obra, ambíguo e contraditório, que, por sua antítese ao direito positivo, possibilita a síntese histórica da transformação social. Assim, a hermenêutica em Brecht é uma via de luta, de concretização da conquista histórica do justo. Delineiam-se, assim, as bases de uma Teoria Brechtiana do Direito.
Palavras-chaves: Ética, Justiça, Mitologia Grega, Marx.

The debate over the merits of originalism has advanced considerably in recent years, both in terms of its intellectual sophistication and its practical significance. In the process, some prominent originalists — Lawrence Solum and Jeffrey Goldsworthy being the two discussed here — have been at pains to separate out the linguistic and normative components of the theory. For these authors, while it is true that judges and other legal decision-makers ought to be originalists, it is also true that the communicated content of the constitution is its original meaning. That is to say: the meaning is what it is, not what it should be. Accordingly, there is no sense in which the communicated content of the constitution is determined by reference to moral desiderata; linguistic desiderata do all the work. In this article I beg to differ. In advancing their arguments for linguistic originalism, both authors rely upon the notion of successful communications conditions. In doing so they implicitly open up the door for moral desiderata to play a role in determining the original communicated content. This undercuts their claim and changes considerably the dialectical role of linguistic originalism in the debate over constitutional interpretation.

The "non-identity argument" has been applied to reject the validity of claims for historic justice, often generating highly unintuitive conclusions. George Sher has suggested a solution to this problem, explaining the harm to descendants of historically wronged peoples as deriving not from the historic wrongs but from the failure to provide rectification to the previous generation for harm they suffered. That generation was likewise owed rectification for harm they suffered from failure to provide rectification to the generation preceding them. In this chain of injustices each failure to provide rectification to one is the source of wrongful harm to the next. Such chains form a "bridge" between the historic wrong and the harm suffered by living individuals. I call this approach the subsequent-wrong solution (SWS).

I argue that bypassing the non-identity argument in this way is problematic. First, SWS cannot justify rectification in seemingly legitimate historic-justice claims, such as historic wrongs generating delayed harms that skip generations. Second, SWS justifies rectification for the wrong reasons, denying the essence of historic-justice claims: that past wrongs, for which original wrongdoers are responsible, harm descendants of original victims. Finally, SWS does not fully account for group membership's role in historic injustice, unable to distinguish between claims of descendants of historic victims and claims made by others with unrelated interests in the rectification of the previous generation. A supplementary solution is needed, focusing on the role of group harm and group membership. The plausibility of this approach, tying individual harm to group harm, derives from these three limitations of the subsequent-harm solution. I give a rudimentary account of what such a solution would look like.

A LINK TO THE PAPER APPEARS BELOW UNDER "VIEW ON PAPERS.SSRN.COM

“Trauma, lei e literatura: o olhar crítico de Shoshana Felman sobre o Direito” [Prefácio] in: Shoshana Felman, O inconsciente jurídico: julgamentos e traumas no século XX, tradução Ariani Sudatti, revisão técnica Bruno Mendes dos Santos, São Paulo: EDIPRO, 2014, pp. 7-13, ISBN 9788572837965