Philosophy of Law

ABSTRACT This paper enquires into the relationship between democracy, law, and revolution in the Marxist works of Harold J. Laski (1893-1950). It is a helpful study to sketch the way in which British Socialists interpreted Marxian categories in the early twentieth century. Laski’s theses on legal pluralism, the opposition of ‘revolution’ and ‘counter-revolution’, and the incompatibility between capitalism and democracy will be discussed by emphasising their interaction with his notion of ‘revolution by consent’. I will also show that Laski’s conception (...) of law and revolution might shed light on his interpretation of the relationship between the economic structure and the politico-legal superstructure, and particularly on his thesis of the reciprocal influence of those two layers of society as giving crucial importance to democratic methods. These conclusions, in the end, might be profitably compared with some conventional readings of Marx’s ideas about revolution, in order to examine and discuss their interpretive validity and stress their implications concerning the transformation of legal systems. (shrink)

Minors should not be punished as harshly as adults for any given crimes they commit. The most common explanation of why is that youths have diminished responsibility-relevant capacities. Recently, Gideon Yaffe has defended the revisionist view that the reason to give juvenile offenders a break in sentencing derives from their political disempowerment. Here, I defend a third alternative: youth is a developmental stage between legal infancy and adulthood during which people are owed special opportunities to cultivate their moral capacities and (...) otherwise fortify themselves against engaging in criminal wrongdoing. Given that minors have not yet received all those opportunities they are owed, they have a claim to mitigated punishment on account of lacking a fully fair opportunity to protect themselves against criminal liability and punishment. They also have distinctive grounds to object to any punishment that would thwart their continued receipt of the developmental opportunity they are owed as youths. (shrink)

Defenses of political obligation—the pro tanto obligation to obey the law because the state commands it—often operate at or near the level of ideal theory. Critics, though, increasingly question that approach’s relevance for the imperfect states that exist. This article develops a lesser evil framework to evaluate political obligation with several advantages over more ideal approaches: (1) avoids the questionable assumption that some actual states are reasonably just, (2) recognizes that context matters for political obligation, (3) captures the complicity involved (...) in obeying the state, and (4) identifies a basis—varying intuitions on lesser evil justifications—to distinguish philosophical anarchism from conceptions of political obligation without the former collapsing into the latter. We remain agnostic on whether this framework establishes political obligation to any state but argue that it offers a compelling account of the moral dilemma of obeying the state under nonideal conditions. (shrink)

The discussion on the division into public and private law (ius publicum) and private law (ius privatum) can be summarized by considering two fundamental issues: (α) the justification of the division and (β) the choice of a criterion for dividing law into public and private. When reading the texts of Polish legal philosophers, it is hard to resist the impression that they do not notice the line separating (α) and (β) and, consequently, the scale of differences between these issues. This (...) is an unacceptable state of affairs. Therefore, the main purpose of this article is to distinguish these two problems more clearly. In particular, we want to show that investigations aimed at determining whether the division between ius publicum and ius privatum is justified may abstract from which theory of division deserves to be distinguished. In practice, both problems, which can be justified both theoretically (supported only by definitions and logical means) and empirically (based on examples from legal dogmatics), are autonomous from each other. (shrink)

Many claim that if a state is responsible for structural injustice, then that state lacks the standing to hold marginalized offenders to account. Call this the compromised standing claim. I argue that this claim sits in tension with a further assumption: that states hold offenders to account in their people’s name. Specifically, I argue that when A holds B accountable in the name of C, A’s own hypocrisy and complicity are not sufficient to undermine her standing to hold B accountable. (...) This means that there exists a gap between a state’s responsibility for structural injustice and its compromised standing. After motivating this challenge, I consider one response according to which the people have lost their standing with respect to marginalized offenders and that the state, qua representative, inherits the standing of its people. I propose two strategies for making this response precise and argue that neither can vindicate the compromised standing claim in its standard form. (shrink)

I develop and defend a novel account of the private law of remedies according to which it is best understood as facilitating deliberations between the parties about the just outcome of their dispute rather than correcting injustice or righting wrongs. According to my democratic conception, the parties are the ones who ideally ought to resolve moral uncertainty about justice between them by deliberating together in good faith about what justice requires. The law of remedies should therefore often refrain from offering (...) a final judgment about what justice between the parties requires, instead setting and implementing fair default rules and principles in the shadow of which the parties will ideally articulate for themselves a joint vision of justice for their relationship. (shrink)

Karl Llewellyn’s critique of the canons of statutory interpretation led to a decline in their use for several decades. His critique, however, faced sustained resistance from some corners of the academy and the judiciary. Although this resistance has had only a selective uptake, it animated a gradual revival of the canons and brought the state of scholarship to an impasse that is for the most part partisan. In this article, I examine the semantic canons from a deeper level and argue (...) that a universal assumption about them is false. Said assumption is that, although not dispositive, the semantic canons at least offer some reasons in favour of or against a candidate interpretation. Inclinations to rely on the semantic canons are also based on this assumption, although it is an assumption that the critics of the canons also share. I argue that this assumption is false because the semantic canons are a class of rules that are by nature not reason-giving. This provides a new ground against giving the semantic canons deliberative weight in questions of statutory interpretation. (shrink)

In a recent article, Kiel Brennan-Marquez and Stephen E. Henderson argue that replacing human judges with AI would violate the role-reversibility ideal of democratic governance. Unlike human judges, they argue, AI judges are not reciprocally vulnerable to the process and effects of their own decisions. I argue that role-reversibility, though a formal ideal of democratic governance, is in the service of substantive ends that may be independently achieved under AI judges. Thus, although role-reversibility is necessary for democratic governance when human (...) judges are on the job, it may not be so when AI judges replace them. One broader implication for normative evaluation of disruptive technologies follows: formal and substantive ideals that often align must be independently examined in the evaluation of disruptive technologies. This is because these formal and substantive ideals may no longer align under the factual circumstances that come to govern when such technologies are deployed. (shrink)

The Brown vs. Board of Education decision’s central affirmation, “separate is inherently unequal,”(the “inherency statement”) is literally false—separate facilities, for different racial groups, can be equal, even if they are often not. The inherency statement has contributed to confusion about integration, (educational) equality, and the relation between them. (1) Schools with one-race-dominant demographics(“separated”) are not necessarily “Segregated” (in the Jim Crow Segregation sense). The forms of racial injustice and subordination involved in separated schools are not necessarily of the same moral (...) character and severity as those of Segregated schools. (2) The Brown decision did not make clear that what was being declared unconstitutional and in violation of the “equal protection of the laws” was precisely the white supremacist system of Segregation itself, in its educational manifestation. (The 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision did so). Separation is “inherently” unequal only within a Segregation system, where the separation reflects a socially recognized stigmatization and assault on the dignity of one group (3) The inherency statement falsely implies that all-Black or all-Indigenous (and thus “separate”) educational institutions cannot be excellent. (4) The existence of an “egalitarian pluralist” tradition, especially in African-American educational thought(but present in different forms within Indigenous, Latine, and Asian American educational traditions), which promotes both equality and separation, is unrecognized as a normative framework in Brown and in subsequent school separation/integration cases. (5) By its misleading touting of integration as the linchpin of equality, the inherency statement masks the vital role of outside-of-school factors, especially concerning students’ socio-economic background, that hinder the achievement of such equality, and closes out an inquiry into what would be required to bring about equality in light of those conditions. The inherency statement implies this because it says we already know that separation is the cause of inequality and integration its remedy. (6) The inherency statement expresses a failure to recognize that integration can be educationally valuable for reasons other than its (alleged or actual) links to equality, in particular as a distinctly favorable setting for civic education that prepares students for life and participation in a multiracial democracy. (The Court recognized the civic importance of education itself, but not specifically of the integrated form of education they mandated.). (shrink)

Andreas von Hirsch's desert-based censure theory defends an influential penal theory centred on blame and proportionality. This article critically examines this theory and identifies three key problems relating to its justification of punishment and its distribution. The article argues that not all of these problems are resolvable, raising serious concerns about the tenability of censure theory in sentencing policy without significant modifications.

Actualmente en México con el cambio de gobierno se respiraba un aire de esperanza en contra de la inseguridad por la que lamentablemente atraviesa el país, con la promesa del actual Presidente Constitucional de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos Lic. Andrés Manuel López Ob rador respecto a la depuración del gobierno y las instituciones de seguridad del país de la corrupción, además con la creación de una fuerza de seguridad que permitiera a los miembros del ejército nacional a resguardarse y la (...) cual ya había sido tema de di scusión en varios momentos de la historia de México la denominada Guardia Nacional. Sin embargo, las reformas a la Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos y la creación de leyes específicas sobre la regularización y organización de esta nueva fuerza de seguridad pareciera ser que no se ha comprendido de manera clara o contun dente el espíritu originario de esta institución, tal vez nuestros representantes políticos en especial en el actual periodo de gobierno federal (poder ejecutivo y legislativo) donde se materializa la idea de la creación de la guardia nacional, la cual ha sido criticada por medios tanto de comunicación, como docentes, investigadores, especialistas en la materia de seguridad así como políticos etc. Por ello en este trabajo se analiza dicha reforma bajo la teoría tridimensional del derecho de Miguel Reale, Esta teoría explica al derecho tomando en consideración de manera inseparable las tres dimensiones de hecho, valor y norma y con ello se aseguran los dos objetivos del orden normativo jurídico los cuales son: 1 Asegurar el pleno goce de los derechos fundam entales de toda persona, como es la vida, la libertad, la dignidad entre otros. 2 Construir el bien común. -/- Todas las conductas de los hombres que se dan en la comunicación intelectual o afectiva entre 2 o más sujetos pueden ser valoradas y reguladas jurídicamente, es decir el derecho se nutre de la vida social, esto es de la interacción social y en especial con el rubro de la seguridad pública que justifica la existencia de esta nueva fuerza policial, institución de la cual se puede obtener más provecho s i se le asignaran más funciones y atribuciones. (shrink)

Campaigns highlighting the alleged incompatibility of the Islamic polity with principles of democratic self-governance are longstanding. The basic assumption of the incompatibalist proposition runs as follows: Political legitimacy in Muslim polities can be reduced to a principle of conformity with a set of divinely given rules and norms, the Sharīʿa, occasionally supplemented, and interpreted, by Islamic legal scholars and practitioners. In short, political Islam recognizes the Sharīʿa and Usūl al-fiqh (or, for the purposes of this essay, fiqh, for short) as (...) the Islamic polity’s foundations––those are deemed incompatible with democratic participation. In response, Mohammad Fadel (2018) has argued that the legal instrument of maṣlaḥa, which Fadel summarizes as considerations of the “public good” or “general interest,” can establish the democratic accountability mechanism that critics see missing in political authorities of Sharīʿa–grounded polities. Fadel supports this normative view with reference to some select classical Sunni jurisprudence, particularly the Usūl al-fiqh. I contest this view in two ways: Firstly, on a conceptual level, most thorough analyses of democracy acknowledge responsiveness and active involvement as fundamental components of democratic self-rule. Fadel’s idea of maṣlaḥa does not entirely align with this notion. Secondly, from a doctrinal standpoint, Fadel’s argument is confined solely within the classical Sunni context. That means, Fadel’s argument is contingent upon a significant departure from numerous (potentially the majority) sources within a comprehensive lineage of maṣlaḥa. (shrink)

Legal theorists agree widely on two necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for the existence of a legal system: a legal system exists if (i) legal officials adopt a critically reflective attitude toward the legal system’s foundational rule, and (ii) the substantive laws of the system are “by and large” efficacious. The latter “efficacy condition” plausibly applies to all posited law, paradigmatically including modern centralized legal systems and less paradigmatic instances like international law. And yet, philosophers have also frequently pointed out (...) the difficulty in determining precisely what this efficacy amounts to. In this article, I argue that the persisting difficulty of explaining the efficacy of law results from three tempting but inadequate assumptions about posited law and that our basic assumptions need to be revised accordingly. (shrink)

Since the earliest Ancient Greek written records from the Mycenaean palaces (ca. 1450–1200 BC) contain no laws, contracts, or judicial decisions, some scholars have considered them unsuitable evidence for legal historical study. Yet this large body of administrative documents reveals much about the operation of the land regime and the interaction of property relations with the central power of the palaces. This article offers a treatment of the relationship between structures in language and normativity in the administrative records relating to (...) land from Late-Bronze-Age Pylos, in particular focussing on a family of textual formulae constructed with the preposition _pa-ro_, which represents a derivative proprietary relation. By focussing on how the records represent the land regime through the use of this formula, and what inconsistencies in its use may tell us, this article explores how we can analyse textual strategies towards an understanding of the system of order in documentary sources. While the tablets are not formally ‘legal’ or normative sources, a study of strategic patterns in the structure of the texts, as well as their inconsistencies and limitations, together shows that normative and legal relations are indeed represented in the records, but appear to be more complex than what is written down. The technical language used by the Mycenaean administrators does not construct a perfectly applied system of abstractions, which has consequences for our understanding of power in the period, perhaps indicating that the complicated sphere of land relations operated partly beyond the palatial system of order. Through this case study this article proposes a method for a more critical approach to normativity in documentary records more generally. The approach outlined here for critically analysing formulae which carry legal meanings may be applied in other contexts using the evidence of ‘practice’, which has often been sidelined by legal historians in favour of normative or formal legal texts. (shrink)

Translating metaphor is a thorny issue within translation studies in general, and within legal religious texts in particular. The present paper addresses translating Quranic explicit and implicit metaphors in legal and non-legal Quranic verses into English. It seeks to explore and analyse the most appropriate translation procedure(s) for translating Quranic explicit and implicit metaphors, which may ensure full conveyance of the ST image and explanation thereof. It uses the Quranic Arabic Corpus to compare and contrast seven translations of Quranic explicit (...) and implicit metaphors in an attempt to find out the similarities and differences between them and the translation procedures adopted by each of them based on Newmark’s [3] types of procedures. The paper argues that one of the most appropriate translation procedures for translating Quranic explicit and implicit metaphors resides chiefly in a combination of literalism and sense-for-sense translation. This may also apply to the translation of the part of the ellipted vehicle mentioned in the verse if the implicit metaphor is personification-based. Such combination ensures keeping the source language image intact in the target text, while uncovering the sense thereof. This would facilitate comprehensibility of the Quranic translated metaphor and make it accessible to both the expert as well as the layman alike. This paper offers a baseline for translating Quranic explicit and implicit metaphors in legal and non-legal Quranic verses into English, which may have implications for translating Quranic explicit, implicit and other types of metaphor in legal and non-legal Quranic verses into other similar Endo-European languages. (shrink)

This article provides a new explanation of the judicial decision-making process using the cognitive dissonance theory. It shows how the process of interpreting and applying the law is affected by the natural human need for consistency between what a person knows, believes, and does. Different authors suggest that judges' decisions are influenced by various factors, including law, personal morality, or rational self-interest. The article argues that none of these visions fully describe the judicial decision-making process and proposes a new approach (...) based on the cognitive dissonance theory. Law, personal morality, and rational self-interest are cognitive elements that influence judicial decisions altogether. However, they are often in conflict and cause cognitive dissonance. Judges lean toward the decision that causes the cognitive dissonance that is the easiest to reduce, considering the cognitive elements’ resistance to change. In the process of interpretation, judges strive to reduce the cognitive dissonance that occurs due to their decisions. The reduction of cognitive dissonance is presented in this article as a “happy ending” of the judicial decision-making process. (shrink)

The paper examines the public justifications regarding the contentious pledge of the Uniform Civil Code versus Personal Laws in India, from its historical evolution to the deliberative processes followed in the transition from pledge to policy. Using a Habermasian framework of deliberative democracy, the study empirically maps the public reasons provided by various stakeholders, including political parties, religious organizations, and civil society groups, spanning the period from 1947 to 2023. The findings reveal diverse arguments for and against the UCC, mostly (...) anchored in shared constitutional values. While proponents emphasize national integration and gender equality, opponents advocate for cultural diversity and religious freedom. The contentious nature of the pledge highlights the broader ideological conflicts and the necessity for consensus-building through public deliberation to achieve democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

This paper aims to explore one significant yet insufficiently elaborated aspect of valuing, namely the positional nature of valuing, which essentially reveals the fact that the valuer occupies a particular position or takes a specific viewpoint in relation to the object being valued. This positional nature of valuing does not merely embody a specific viewpoint from which the valuer’s beliefs, attitudes, reasons, and emotions are conveyed in a complex manner towards the valued object, but also constitute a particular position from (...) which the valuer engages with the valued object in a reason-giving manner. As systematically elaborated and lucidly revealed by this paper, this positional nature of valuing will on the one hand elucidate the conceptual interlock between ‘valuing’ and ‘valuable’ along the value-reason nexus with reference to arguments by T.M. Scanlon and Samuel Scheffler. On the other hand, it will also illuminate why we may have reason to value something from the perspective of practical reasoning. (shrink)

Discussions of Nazi law tend to centre upon Fuller’s desiderata of the rule of law. Whilst not disputing this connection, this essay argues that tyranny and oppression are marked by the (ab)use of law to invade the domain proper to individual moral thinking, and to transform citizens into models of conformity to whatever values the tyrant cherishes. Its main consideration is how a community can recover from periods of tyranny, and how the law can recover its dignity having shown itself (...) capable of evil uses. So, it is focused more on ‘substantive’ rather than ‘procedural’ morality. (shrink)

In German judicial methodological theories, Analogie is a form of further development of the law (Rechtsfortbildung) in cases of statutory loopholes (Gesetzeslücke). This paper argues that there are at least four levels of indeterminacy in Analogie which reveal the argumentative characteristics in making an Analogie argument. Current methodological theories commonly construct Analogie based on deductive models; however, this approach fails to address the argumentative process of Analogie. This paper suggests that theories of Inference to the Best Explanation can better capture (...) these characteristics when it is used to represent Analogie in law. It examines theories of IBE and evaluates their potential to facilitate legal reasoning. The last part of this paper suggests an Analogie model which is based on IBE. This alternative model enhances the rationale-giving and dialectical function in the construction of an Analogie argument. (shrink)

This paper explores the implications of tokens in the legal discourse when it comes to blockchain networks and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In doing so, reference is made to the functioning and requirements of blockchain networks opposite to that of Statehood. Methodologically, the argument is built on the semiotic relationship between signifier and signified as outlined in De Saussure (1916) as further developed in the comprehensive work done by Lacan (Écrits (trans. Alan Sheridan), Routledge, 1977). Apparently, the factors that influence (...) this choice are considered to be of a non-legal nature. More properly, current gaps in regulation and the lack of cooperation at international level require resorting to extra-legal approaches. In contrast, the fact that economic and strategic motives play a role, does not in itself make the legal discourse devoid of any meaning. In what follows, I will concentrate on the study of factors that explain why such approach can be fruitful to establish new strategies to adjust the legal discourse to advances in technology and society. I have three reasons for selecting this topic. The first is a more pragmatic reason, based on my current research of law as a linguistic and societal phenomenon. Secondly, the topic does also touch the existing entanglement between law and economy whereby results intersect with the protection of rights inherent to members of blockchain communities. Lastly, this article relies on a dynamic concept of legal validity as a continuous process of constructing, negotiating, and reconstructing the array of blockchain communities’ interactions and transactions. Overall, these suggested methodological approaches aim at providing non-mutually exclusive reading keys to a prospective evolution of legal thought as of the Fourth Industrial Revolution changes. In contrast, they concur to provide new frames of enquiry instead of approaching these topics as objects of analysis from a sole exegetic standpoint. As a matter of fact, textualism lacks the capabilities to achieve consistent and categorial selections along with methodological exclusions that certain variants of its theories claim to accomplish. When understood against the background of a careful delineation of the choices that legal studies require, their purpose helps to give shape to a fundamental question; given the functioning of legal studies to direct choices among otherwise plausible significance of legal meaning, should they make use of an exclusively legal, or a cross-disciplinary approach? This study advocates the latter method. In this context, reference is made to the relational and representational components of property, contracts, and tokens to frame the contextual rather than the strict textual meaning of tokenisation. In this context, the above elements concur to bridge the gap among _referents_ pertaining to separate realms. Differently put, the recourse to these extra-legal categories corresponds to levels of abstraction (Tanenbaum, 1976) functioning. They refer to the structured representation of information, ranging from detailed specifics to broader concepts. Abstraction aids in comprehending complex phenomena by allowing analysis at varying granularities. Employing multiple levels facilitates a systematic understanding, enabling individuals to delve into intricate systems, discern patterns, and derive insights, thereby fostering a comprehensive grasp of multi-layered phenomena. (shrink)

Article 12 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires data controllers to provide data subjects with any information relating to data processing operations “in a concise, transparent, intelligible and easily accessible form, using clear and plain language.” Linguistic inclusivity of privacy policies is no longer a matter of style, but has been a binding legal requirement under the new data protection framework. Article 5 GDPR sets forth the requirements of lawfulness, fairness and transparency and prohibits any data processing operations (...) which do not meet the standards of specification, explicitness and legitimacy of processing purposes [ 29 ]. In this study, a quantitative and qualitative analysis of linguistic indeterminacy in a corpus of 350 online privacy policies is presented and it is argued that a considerable number of data controllers continue to make use of strategic vagueness in the context of purpose limitation, therefore potentially prejudicing compliance with the GDPR. A legal-linguistic perspective on the current challenges of informed consent in European data protection law is provided. Finally, it is concluded that while the GDPR has contributed significantly to the linguistic empowerment of the data subject, the framework fails to satisfy the expectation of creating a participatory culture (see [ 36 ]) with a high degree of informational self-determination. (shrink)

This article analyzes how the European Union’s Deforestation-Free Products Regulation (EUDR) could affect the production of forest goods in Mato Grosso (MT), a Brazilian state whose economy depends on commodity exports. The text is divided into five topics: the first discusses the context of forestry products in the Brazilian state; the second analyzes the trade in forestry goods in the EU, its regulation, and the prospects for its application in MT; the third offers a conceptualization of the Brussels Effect and (...) its manifestation in Brazil; the forth one presents the results of field research with actors in the forestry sector in the state, exploring their perceptions about the EU Brussels Effect; and the last one analzyes which Mato Grosso’s municipalities are more exposed to the EUDR in their timber exports. The results obtained through semi-structured interviews highlight the diversity of knowledge of the different groups interviewed about European regulations in the country’s timber forestry industry. State authorities show a clear awareness of the influence of EU regulations, mainly concerning local public policies and international pressure on deforested areas in the Amazon. Stakeholder perceptions reveal a complex intersection between environmental, economic, and social concerns, highlighting the importance of constructive dialogue between different actors to mitigate conflicts and promote sustainable practices in the forestry sector, in line with global and local conservation demands for environmental and sustainability. Additionally, more than 80 Mato Grosso municipalities will be directly impacted by the EUDR, given their export profiles. (shrink)

In this text we will focus on the interpretation of law, specifically on the question of how the meaning of legal texts is created and recreated through judicial interpretation of law. To be able to explain how this happens, we will use the philosophy of language, in particular the philosophy of the late Ludwig Wittgenstein, Wilfrid Sellars and Robert B. Brandom. In their view, language is not a tool that serves primarily and exclusively to describe a world that exists independently (...) of us and our attitudes, but through language we co-create the world we live in. Many of the things we perceive in the world around us are accessible to us and exist because of our language. (shrink)

Considered an iconic symbol of indigenous legal heritage, Islamic law is adopted nowadays in whole or in part in the legal systems of the Muslim world and is also of significance in Muslim-minority European countries, where it typically finds its niche in civil and financial domains. This article sets out to investigate the norms of translating Islamic family law discourse using a mixed methods approach based on ‘qualitising’ quantitative data, i.e., an approach in which quantitative data are interpreted qualitatively. Drawing (...) on a self-built monolingual English corpus of over three million words covering diverse genres, the analysis will harness the power of corpus processing to enable the study of ten iconic lexical profiles (individual concepts/conceptual systems and their corresponding Arabic and English terms) that are specific to Islamic family law. Profile-based correspondence is also employed to investigate the probability of lexical variation in expressing a conceptual category—a profile refers to a set of synonymous variants or linguistic labels that can be used to designate the same concept. The corpus analysis seeks to identify the key loanwords that represent cultural icons featured in the English-language discourse of Islamic family law and to explore the different mechanisms used to render shariʿa-based concepts. The aim is to investigate concomitant translation norms based on linguistic frequency in the corpus and to interpret ideological implications with reference to the theory of translation norms, which postulates that translation decision making is subject to norms dictated by extralinguistic factors (e.g., socio-political or ideological). The study finds that Islamic family law relies significantly on Arabic loanwords (constructing an ‘Islamgish’ discourse) to maintain shariʿa-based linguistic heritage, which can be seen as a kind of ‘working for one’s own good’. Thus, what is at play here is the ethics of self-interest, which is very typical of postcolonial agendas. (shrink)

This article applies van Gennep’s structure of the ritual to the patent application process, arguing that information undergoes several ontological transformations on the way to patentability. The second half of the article applies Turner’s focus on the liminal space. From this perspective, the ‘pure possibility’ of the liminal space is essential to patent law, because it helps negotiate between strong boundaries (as a form of property) and the almost improvisational way in which general rules are applied to specific patents. Taken (...) together, these two approaches provide a more nuanced understanding of how patent law comes into existence and how the patents themselves operate as distinct social and cultural artefacts. The analysis does not intend to replace the economic understanding of patent law, but instead seeks to reflect more completely how it actually functions. (shrink)

Law and modernity -- The Advent of modernity -- Theorists and critics of modern law -- Transformations of modern law -- Legal system and legal reasoning -- Legality and validity -- Theories of legal reasoning -- Advanced sections.

El propósito de este estudio es analizar las principales causas de los movimientos poblacionales en Colombia como consecuencia de factores ambientales, en especial, del cambio climático, en vista de discernir una distinción no solo conceptual, sino metodológica entre dos categorías de movimiento poblacional: la migración forzada y el desplazamiento forzado. De este modo, se dará cumplimiento a los siguientes objetivos específicos: 1) examinar la concordancia entre los factores causales que configuran temporalmente los fenómenos de migración y de desplazamiento forzado y (...) 2) elucidar si todo desplazamiento forzado está oculto en un evento migratorio. (shrink)