Virtue Jurisprudence

What should a virtue theory of argumentation say about fallacious reasoning? If good arguments are virtuous, then fallacies are vicious. Yet fallacies cannot just be identified with vices, since vices are dispositional properties of agents whereas fallacies are types of argument. Rather, if the normativity of good argumentation is explicable in terms of virtues, we should expect the wrongness of bad argumentation to be explicable in terms of vices. This approach is defended through analysis of several fallacies, with particular emphasis on the ad misericordiam.

En este trabajo me interesa enfocar críticamente una tentativa muy reciente en el dominio de la " Jurisprudencia de la Virtud ": la incorporación del concepto de empatía en conexión con el de justicia. Con arreglo a esta tesis, un juez está capacitado para impartir justicia en la medida en que posee empatía. Con diferentes matices, Michael Slote y John Deigh defienden esta tesitura. Con todo, ambas posturas exhiben problemas. Si bien parece atinado incorporar la discusión sobre las emociones en el dominio jurídico, no parece del todo acertado incorporar el concepto de empatía, por razones que procuraré defender. Una vez explicitadas estas críticas, sugeriré qué vía de análisis alternativa permitiría integrar de manera fértil el tratamiento de las emociones.

In this paper I will be offering a critique on recent thought about an issue within the domain of Virtue– Jurisprudence which establishes a close connection between the concepts of empathy and justice. According to this idea, a judge´s ability to impart justice is dependent on whether or not she possesses empathy. Both Michael Slote and John Deigh defend this opinion, though in different ways. Nevertheless, I think both positions are subject to criticisms. Even when it seems appropriate to incorporate a reflection on emotions within the judicial realm, it does not seem correct to incorporate the concept of empathy. I will attempt to offer reasons why this is so. After addressing these criticisms, I will suggest what could count as a promissory way of incorporating emotions in the legal sphere.

If good argument is virtuous, then fallacies are vicious. Yet fallacies cannot just be identified with vices, since vices are dispositional properties of agents whereas fallacies are types of argument. Rather, if the normativity of good argumentation is explicable in terms of virtues, we should expect the wrongness of fallacies to be explicable in terms of vices. This approach is defended through case studies of several fallacies, with particular emphasis on the ad hominem.

Humility has been mostly understood in law as an adjudicative virtue that favours judicial restraint. In contrast, this paper argues that the value of humility is hardly restricted to the judiciary -let alone to providing an argument for judicial deference. Rather, humility is an extremely valuable character trait across the legal professions. First, humility has an important impact on the organizational dimensions of the legal professions, in that it generates an egalitarian work environment, stregthens social bonds, is positively related to emotional well-being, enhances performance and innovation, and enables legal organizations to function in highly diverse contexts. Second, humility is critical for excelling in the professional legal practice, for it importantly contributes to both individual and collective legal decision-making. Third, it is also central to legal professional development as it is associated with attitudes that contribute to knowledge acquisition and, specially, with emotional and motivational dispositions that enable learning by example. After showing the relevance of humility to the legal professions, the paper suggests some ways in which it could be fostered through legal education and institutional design. It concludes by offering some reflections about the political implications of giving humiliy an important role in the context of legal professions.

This chapter discusses the role of coherence in a theory of evidence and legal proof.  Sections 2, 3, and 4 discuss three main approaches to coherence: structural coherence, narrative coherence, and coherence as constraint satisfaction. Sections 4, 5 and 6 address some problems concerning the relation between coherence and inference, coherence and virtue, and coherence and truth in the context of legal fact-finding. In section 7 suggests some avenues for further research on coherence, evidence and legal proof.

A principal venue for the acquisition of judicial virtue is the emulation of exemplary judges. Such emulation is triggered by the emotion of admiration, which thus plays a critical role in the development of judicial virtue. In this chapter, I first examine the emotion of admiration. Next, I explain how it motivates the emulation of exemplars and ultimately leads to the acquisition of judicial virtue as well as the ways in which this process from admiration to virtue may go wrong. In addition to it being crucial for emulation, admiration also plays important social functions within the judiciary. After explaining the beneficial social effects of admiration, the chapter concludes by discussing some implications for legal education.

This paper dwells on the relationship between judicial empathy and integrity. It claims that for the emergence and proper functioning of judicial empathy as a kind of judicial virtue, a number of conditions needed to be fulfilled, including the development of judicial integrity. The paper aims to unpack this argument and to demonstrate judicial empathy and integrity in action as exemplified particularly by judicial behaviour observed during empirical research in Cracow lower courts. The overall perspective for examining the relationship between judicial empathy and integrity rests on the developmental vision of a judge. Although the presented research fits into the broader interest in judicial empathy and judicial virtues, the paper contains concrete examples of verbal and non-verbal behaviours of a judge that demonstrate how judicial empathy co-functions with other skills and virtues. In general, the paper opposes the marginalisation of judicial skills and virtues.

This paper articulates an egalitarian conception of judicial humility and justifies its value on the grounds that it importantly advances the legal and political ideal of fraternity. This account of the content and value of the virtue of humility stands in sharp contrast with the dominant view of judicial humility as deference or judicial restraint. The paper concludes by discussing some ways in which the account of humility and of its value provided in the paper furthers our understanding of the judicial virtues and of the political implications of giving virtue a role in adjudication.

La tesis principal de este trabajo es que una epistemología jurídica adecuada debe asentarse, de manera fundamental, en dos grandes pilares: la idea de coherencia y la idea de virtud. En la primera sección, sostendré que el coherentismo es una teoría prometedora para analizar la justificación de las conclusiones acerca de los hechos en el Derecho. De manera más específica, como argumentaré en la segunda sección, es el coherentismo explicacionista el tipo de coherentismo que, me parece, puede ofrecer un paradigma adecuado para analizar el problema de la justificación de los enunciados fácticos en el Derecho. En la siguiente sección, describiré un problema que aqueja al coherentismo, a pesar de su plausibilidad inicial. Mi argumento central, como desarrollaré en la sección cuarta, es que este problema se puede resolver apelando a la idea de virtud. Concluiré apuntando, en la última sección, algunas líneas de investigación futuras que se abren una vez que insertamos la idea de virtud en la epistemología jurídica.

Resumen. En este trabajo examino en sus rasgos característicos una tentativa muy reciente: la de incorporar centralmente el concepto de empatía en conexión con el de justicia para pensar las prácticas de los magistrados. Para ello reconstruyo las posiciones de dos referentes contemporáneos sobre la materia, Michael Slote y John Deigh, y muestro por qué sus planteamientos no resultan del todo satisfactorios. Es así que propongo a la perspectiva aristotélica como una vía de análisis mayormente fructífera, dado que consigue afrontar con mejor éxito las objeciones a las que una posición vindicatoria de la empatía está expuesta. Por lo demás, estos desarrollos se dan en el marco de una promisoria línea de análisis en filosofía jurídica: la llamada Virtue Jurisprudence, a la que también me referiré en este trabajo.
Abstract. In this paper I examine in its main features a recent attempt in the domain of legal ethics, one that seeks to address the question of justice in relation with empathy. For this purpose, I reconstruct the positions of Michael Slote and John Deigh, aiming to show the kind of criticisms to which both of them are subject. Accordingly, I suggest that Aristotle´s perspective is better equipped to confront those kinds of criticisms. Besides, all these developments and discussions are framed in a fruitful field of legal philosophy: the so-called Virtue Jurisprudence, to which I will also refer in this article.

En su libro Making the Case, Paul Kahn establece que hay una estrecha conexión en la cultura jurídica norteamericana entre la soberanía popular y las sentencias judiciales. Los estudios teóricos de las decisiones judiciales se han enfocado en identificar cuáles son las grandes sentencias y los elementos que hacen que sean grandes. Sin embargo, se ha dejado de lado el estudio de los jueces ejemplares y los elementos que los hace ejemplares. Este texto propone una nueva manera de mirar las decisiones judiciales que parte de las virtudes que hacen que un juez sea ejemplar. Para este análisis se empieza por una enunciación de los rasgos o virtudes de los jueces ejemplares para luego analizar las funciones que estos jueces desempeñan dentro de la cultura jurídica. Dentro de esto, el texto presenta el debate sobre la subjetividad judicial y sus efectos en la cultura jurídica. Finalmente, el texto sostiene que la ejemplaridad judicial es un concepto útil para la resolución de problemas en teoría del derecho y contrasta sus conclusiones con aquéllas presentadas por Paul Kahn en Making the Case sobre el fundamento de la autoridad judicial.

This paper claims that, contrary to what some critics some claimed, a virtue approach to legal reasoning does not inject subjectivity in legal decision-making, however, it puts forward a conception of objectivity that importantly differs from the ‘methodical’ one that is generally assumed in legal scholarship. In contrast to this conception, which situates objectivity in impersonal methods of reasoning, virtue jurisprudence advances a ‘dialectical’ conception of objectivity, in which subjective features of decision-makers are partly constitutive of the objectivity of legal judgments. More specifically, the virtuous legal decision-maker provides, in this view, an objective standard for evaluating legal judgment. It may be argued that this standard fails to be objective as it may validate incompatible decisions in cases of disagreement and ambivalence. The paper examines this objection and argues that the possibility of normative conflict among and within virtuous legal decision-makers does not succeed in showing that virtue theory is committed to relativism, but it suggests the plausibility of developing a pluralistic virtue jurisprudence.

The main tenet that this paper aims to establish is that judicial virtue is necessary for successful legal interpretation. Theories of interpretation are exceedingly useful devices to guide and assess judicial reasoning, but they are limited in that the soundness of their outcomes is dependent upon the possession and exercise of judicial virtue. Thus, a theory of judicial character is inextricably linked with a theory of legal interpretation. After sustaining this claim, the paper then provides an account of the structure of judicial virtue according to which judicial virtue is best understood as analogous to a practical skill. Next, it sketches a preliminary account of the kinds of character traits that are necessary for virtuous adjudication. Finally, the essay concludes by explicating the main elements -which are needed to arrive at justified judicial decisions but that no theory of interpretation may supply- that a virtuous judge brings to the process of legal interpretation. What results is a view of constitutional and statutory interpretation in which judicial virtue takes central stage.

This chapter develops an exemplarist virtue approach to the study of ethical leadership in international organizations. First, it puts forward a conceptualization of ethical leadership in international organizations in terms of virtue. Next, it gives an account of the role that exemplary ethical leaders, i.e., leaders that possess and exercise a large share of leadership virtues, play within international organizations. Last, it argues that exemplary leaders enjoy moral authority, which is a contributing factor to legitimacy in global governance institutions. I conclude with some reflections about how an exemplarist virtue approach to ethical leadership in international organizations may be put to work.

This paper examines the relevance of group deliberative virtues to the epistemology of legal proof. In section II, I propose a typology of the main kinds of traits of character that are virtues in the context of group-deliberation about factual issues in law. In section III, I defend the value of these virtues by explicating the ways in which they contribute to sound legal decision-making about the facts being litigated on the part of juries and composite courts. The third section argues that group-deliberative virtues help us correct critical deliberative distortions that threaten to undermine group decision-making on disputed questions of fact. I conclude by exploring some implications of the argument developed in this paper for legal education as well as the design of legal fact-finding institutions.