Nature of Law

The Nature of Law and Legal Systems

This section covers:

• Interpretivist Theories of Law
• Legal Positivism
• Natural Law Theory
• Legal Realism
• Mixed Theories of Law

Books and Papers

• Josep Aguiló Regla (1990). Lenguaje jurídico, lenguaje documental y tesauro. Theoria 5 (1-2):31-65. The aim of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, it tries to analyze and sistematize some of the concepts used when approaching the linguislic problems concerning the legal documentation automatic systems: legal language, documentary language, linguistic coordination (a priori and a posteriori) and thesaurus. On the other hand, it intends to carry out a detailed study of the legal thesauri, focusingbasicany on its t wo structural elements: the vocabulary and the paradigmatic relationships.
• Liqin Ai (2006). By Maritain’s Ideas and Culture, History, and the Relationship Between the Natural Moral Law. Philosophy and Culture 33 (3):37-67. In this paper, Maritain’s theory, to explore culture, history and the relationship between the natural moral law. Provides a natural moral law and moral principles common starting point for dialogue, so that different religious, cultural, philosophical system can have a space for dialogue. This article first discusses Maritain’s theory, the combination of state-like problem, introducing the principle of asymptotic lines, and to test how the history of a cultural understanding and implementation of the amount of natural moral law.
• Gemma Minero Alejandre (2013). Aproximación jurídica al concepto de derecho de autor. Intento de calificación como libertad de producción artística y científica o como derecho de propiedad. Dilemata 12:215-245. This article discusses the nature of copyright as a fundamental right. After studying the two faces of copyright, both economic and moral, I analyze whether copyright should be seen as part of the freedom of artistic and scientific creation (article 20.1.b Spanish Constitution) or as part of the general property right (article 33). Finally, I explore the possibility of applying these conclusions to other intellectual property rights (related rights, patents, trademarks, etc.). This discussion is not trivial.
• Larry Alexander (2012). What’s Inside and Outside the Law? Law and Philosophy 31 (2):213-241. In this article I take up a conceptual question: What is the distinction between ‘the law’ and the behavior the law regulates, or, as I formulate it, the distinction between what is ‘inside’ the law and what is ‘outside’ it? That conceptual question is in play in (at least) three different doctrinal domains: the constitutional law doctrines regarding the limits on the delegation of legislative powers; the criminal law doctrines regarding mistakes of law; and the constitutional rights doctrines that turn (…)
• Larry Alexander (2001). The Rule of Rules: Morality, Rules, and the Dilemmas of Law. Duke University Press. In “The Rule of Rules” Larry Alexander and Emily Sherwin examine this dilemma.
• Robert Alexy (2012). Comments and Responses. In Matthias Klatt (ed.), Institutionalized Reason: The Jurisprudence of Robert Alexy. Oxford University Press.
• Robert Alexy (2012). Law, Morality, and the Existence of Human Rights. Ratio Juris 25 (1):2-14. In the debate between positivism and non-positivism the argument from relativism plays a pivotal role. The argument from relativism, as put forward, for instance, by Hans Kelsen, says, first, that a necessary connection between law and morality presupposes the existence of absolute, objective, or necessary moral elements, and, second, that no such absolute, objective, or necessary moral elements exist. My reply to this is that absolute, objective, or necessary moral elements do exist, for human rights exist, and human rights exist (…)
• Robert Alexy (2010). The Dual Nature of Law. Ratio Juris 23 (2):167-182. The argument of this article is that the dual-nature thesis is not only capable of solving the problem of legal positivism, but also addresses all fundamental questions of law. Examples are the relation between deliberative democracy and democracy qua decision-making procedure along the lines of the majority principle, the connection between human rights as moral rights and constitutional rights as positive rights, the relation between constitutional review qua ideal representation of the people and parliamentary legislation, the commitment of legal argumentation (…)
• Robert Alexy (2009). A Theory of Constitutional Rights. OUP Oxford. This classic work of constitutional theory analyzes the general structure of constitutional rights and their judicial application. It deals with a wide range of problems common to all systems of constitutional rights review – from balancing rights to deciding the limits of their scope.
• Robert Alexy (2008). On the Concept and the Nature of Law. Ratio Juris 21 (3):281-299. Robert Alexy (2007). On Two Juxtapositions: Concept and Nature, Law and Philosophy. Some Comments on Joseph Raz’s “Can There Be a Theory of Law?”. Ratio Juris 20 (2):162-169.
• Robert Alexy (2006). Effects of Defects-Action or Argument? Thoughts About Deryck Beyleveld and Roger Brownsword’s Law as a Moral Judgment. Ratio Juris 19 (2):169-179.
• Robert Alexy (2004). The Nature of Legal Philosophy. Ratio Juris 17 (2):156-167.
• Robert Alexy (2003). Constitutional Rights, Balancing, and Rationality. Ratio Juris 16 (2):131-140.
• Robert Alexy (2003). On Balancing and Subsumption. A Structural Comparison. Ratio Juris 16 (4):433-449.
• Robert Alexy (2000). On the Structure of Legal Principles. Ratio Juris 13 (3):294-304. The author offers a sketch of his thesis that legal principles are optimization commands. He presents this thesis as an effort to capture the structure of weighing or balancing and to provide a basis for the principle of proportionality as it is applied in constitutional law. With this much in place, he then takes up some of the problems that have come to be associated with the optimization thesis.
• Robert Alexy (2000). On the Thesis of a Necessary Connection Between Law and Morality: Bulygin’s Critique. Ratio Juris 13 (2):138-147.
• Robert Alexy (1999). The Special Case Thesis. Ratio Juris 12 (4):374-384.
• Andrew Altman (1990). Charles Sampford, The Disorder of Law: A Critique of Legal Theory. [REVIEW] Philosophy in Review 10:198-201.
• Rafat Y. Alwazna (2013). Testing the Precision of Legal Translation: The Case of Translating Islamic Legal Terms Into English. [REVIEW] International Journal for the Semiotics of Law – Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique 26 (4):897-907. Legal translation is viewed as “a category in its own right” (Weston in An English reader’s guide to the French legal system. Berg, Oxford, (1991, p. 2). It is a kind of translation of the language used for specific purposes (Zhao in J Transl Stud 4:28, 2000). Legal translation requires accuracy in relaying the substance of the message, while respecting the form thereof as well as the genius of the target language.
• Garcia Amado & Juan Antonio (2010). El Derecho y Sus Circunstancias: Nuevos Ensayos de Filosofía Jurídica. Universidad Externado de Colombia.
• Horacio Andaluz (2005). Positivismo Normativo y Derecho Internacional. Plural Editores.
• Bruce Anderson (2010). The Nine Lives of Legal Interpretation. Journal of Macrodynamic Analysis 5:30-36. Legal scholars talk and write about interpretation in terms of the meaningof words, and for many legal philosophers legal interpretation involvessubsuming particular situations under general rules. However, the more youexamine legal interpretation the more confusing the whole idea ofinterpretation becomes. The aim of this paper is to use Bernard Lonergan’sdiscussion of functional specialization to make sense of this disorderlystate of affairs.
• Marco Andreacchio, Two Forms of Platonism: A New Interpretation of Jung’s “Mythical Empiricism” and Vico’s “Critical Metaphysics”. This paper juxtaposes the thought of Carl G. Jung to that of Giambattista Vico , aiming primarily at overturning all currently dominant historicist readings of Vico’s political philosophy. On the way, I illuminate Vico’s rational or non-dogmatic response to both medieval Christian theology and modern “scientific” philosophy . The Vico emerging through his own arguments and “reasoning” is a reviver of political philosophy in the Socratic tradition of Plato and Cicero.
• Héctor Óscar Arrese Igor (2010). El rol del derecho internacional en la teoría fichteana del Estado y la propiedad. Endoxa 26:43-62. En este trabajo intento mostrar, contra la tesis de D. James, que existe una relación de continuidad entre la teoría del derecho internacional del Fundamento del derecho natural y de El Estado comercial cerrado de Johann G. Fichte, basándome en dos razones. En primer lugar, en ambos textos la propiedad de los ciudadanos puede ser garantizada sólo si el Estado es soberano en relación con los demás para planificar su propia política económica.
• Manuel Atienza & Juan Ruiz Manero (1996). Las Piezas Del Derecho Teoría de Los Enunciados Jurídicos.
• José Manuel Bermudo Avila (2005). El Derecho Olvidado. Revista Internacional de Filosofía Política 25:89-108.
• Ares Axiotis (1988). Making Law Bind: Essays Legal and Philosophical. Philosophical Books 29 (2):110-112.
• Hugo Aznar (2010). Por una teoría normativa de la comunicación a la altura de los tiempos: ¿más derecho, más política, más ética? (A propósito de la publicación de La agonía del cuarto poder de Carlos Ruiz). Dilemata 3. El artículo debate un ensayo recientemente publicado sobre la doctrina liberal de la libertad de prensa y sus retos actuales. En primer lugar, presenta brevemente el recorrido histórico de la doctrina liberal que hace el ensayo, así como los principales retos a los que se enfrenta hoy esta doctrina por los cambios en los medios. Y luego pasa a discutir con más detalle qué instancia normativa debería contribuir más a mejorar los medios.
• Francisco T. Baciero Ruiz (2012). El concepto de derecho subjetivo y el derecho a la propiedad privada en Suárez y Locke. Anuario Filosófico 45 (2):391 – 421.
• Carlos A. Ball (2009). Legal Philosophy. In Francis J. Mootz (ed.), On Philosophy in American Law. Cambridge University Press 273.
• Charles Hillel Baron (1972). Law and the Fly-Bottle: Aspects of Professor Hart’s Jurisprudence of Non-Descriptive Legal Utterances. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania
• María Ángeles Barrere Unzueta & F. J. Ezquiaga Ganuzas (1988). “DOXA” Cuadernos de Filosofía del Derecho. Nemero 4. Theoria 4 (1):249-255.
• María Ángeles Barrere Unzuita (1988). Monismo metodológico y dualismo analítico, teórico y semiótico en la Filosofía del Derecho. Theoria 4 (1):163-176. In this paper, a series of observations have been made on the pecularities originated by the Theory of Law as an autonomous subject within the wider framework of the Philosophy of Law. The object of these observations is not, however, the Theory of Law in genere but the Theory of Law as understood and defended by some Italian Philosophers of Law of the so-called ‘Bobbio School’.
• Robert Barry (1981). John Finnis: “Natural Law and Natural Rights”. [REVIEW] The Thomist 45 (4):626.
• Charles Lowell Barzun (2013). Legal Rights and the Limits of Conceptual Analysis: A Case Study. Ratio Juris 26 (2):215-234. Legal philosophers divide over whether it is possible to analyze legal concepts without engaging in normative argument. The influential analysis of legal rights advanced by Jules Coleman and Jody Kraus some years ago serves as a useful case study to consider this issue because even some legal philosophers who are generally skeptical of the neutrality claims of conceptual analysts have concluded that Coleman and Kraus’s analysis manages to maintain such neutrality. But that analysis does depend in subtle but important ways.
• Gregory Bassham (2012). Legislating Morality: Scoring the Hart-Devlin Debate After Fifty Years. Ratio Juris 25 (2):117-132. It has now been more than 50 years since H. L. A Hart and Lord Patrick Devlin first squared off in perhaps the most celebrated jurisprudential debate of the twentieth-century (1959-1967). The central issue in that dispute-whether the state may criminalize immoral behavior as such-continues to be debated today, but in a vastly changed legal landscape. In this article I take a fresh look at the Hart-Devlin debate in the light of five decades of social and legal changes.
• Letizia Gianformaggio Bastida & Stanley L. Paulson (1995). Cognition and Interpretation of Law. Monograph Collection (Matt – Pseudo).
• Valderrama Bedoya, J. Francisco, Rico Puerta & Luis Alonso (eds.) (2011). Teoría Del Derecho. Universidad de Medellín.
• Fabrice Béland (2008). An Update of Strauss’s Notes and References in the First Part of the Chapter “The Crisis of Modern Natural Right” in Natural Right and History. Interpretation 35 (2):183-193.
• Theodore M. Benditt (1998). A Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory. Dialogue 37 (4):828-830.
• Theodore M. Benditt (1981). Law and Legal Science. Philosophical Books 22 (4):213-215.
• Carolyn Benson & Julian Fink (2012). Introduction: New Perspectives on Nazi Law. Jurisprudence 3 (2):341-346. It is beyond doubt that the legal system established by the Nazi government in Germany between 1933-1945 represented a gross departure from the rule of law: the Nazis eradicated legal security and certainty; allowed for judicial and state arbitrariness; blocked epistemic access to what the law requires; issued unpredictable legal requirements; and so on. This introduction outlines the distorted nature of the Nazi legal system and looks at the main factors that contributed to this grave divergence.
• Carolyn Benson & Julian Fink (2012). Legal Oughts, Normative Transmission, and the Nazi Use of Analogy. Jurisprudence 3 (2):445-463. In 1935, the Nazi government introduced what came to be known as the abrogation of the pro- hibition of analogy. This measure, a feature of the new penal law, required judges to stray from the letter of the written law and to consider instead whether an action was worthy of pun- ishment according to the ‘sound perception of the people’ and the ‘underlying principle’ of existing criminal statutes.

Resources

See Also

Interpretivist Theories of Law
Legal Positivism
Natural Law Theory
Legal Realism
Mixed Theories of Law