Legal Theory and Sociological Facts

The authors investigate MacCormick and Weinberger's claim that the Institutional Theory of Law provides a conceptual framework for the study of legal phenomena from a socio-legal point of view. They evaluate this claim by confronting both the Institutional Theory of Law and Weinberger's theory of action with two approaches in socio-legal theory, i.e. the instrumentalist and the constitutive approach. The conclusion is that the Institutional Theory of Law lends itself to empirical research from an instrumentalist perspective, for both place the concept institution in the context of law. Weinberger's theory of action may provide a basis for empirical research from a constitutive perspective. The authors make some suggestions for refinement of Weinberger's theory of action in order that the relation between institutions and action can be labeled dynamic.     

Testing Alternative Legal Paradigms: An Experiment in Designing Tax Legislation

This article reports on empirical research undertaken to test the claim made in a law reform project that citizens could be made more certain of their legal obligations by changing the legal paradigm used to express their rights and obligations. Our research tested a number of hypotheses involving different formulations of the claim being made. We find that the alternative paradigm being presented was inferior to current practice and offer some reasons that would explain our results and the significance of this work for other areas of legal research.     

Labor Regulation,Corporate Governance,and Legal Origin: A Case of Institutional Complementarity?

We explore the influential claim that "legal origin"—the historical origin of a given national legal system in the common law or civil law—accounts for a significant degree of cross-national diversity in economic regulation and development. We show that the claim is undermined by problems in index construction and by a misreading of the implications of the common law/civil law divide for the respective roles of courts and legislatures in law making. We argue that a critical factor, instead, was the timing of industrialization in relation to the emergence of legal institutions associated with the modern business enterprise (the employment relationship and the joint stock company). We also show how distinctive "legal cultures" of the common law and civil law have played a part in setting national systems on separate pathways to economic development.     

Karl Olivecrona's Legal Philosophy. A Critical Appraisal*

I argue in this article (i) that Karl Olivecrona's legal philosophy, especially the critique of the view that law has binding force, the analysis of the concept and function of a legal rule, and the idea that law is a matter of organized force, is a significant contribution to twentieth century legal philosophy. I also argue (ii) that Olivecrona fails to substantiate some of his most important empirical claims, and (iii) that the distinction espoused by Olivecrona between the truth and the correctness of legal statements is problematic but not needed in Olivecrona's legal philosophy.     

Beyond Inclusive Legal Positivism*

In this essay, I characterize the original intervention that became Inclusive Legal Positivism, defend it against a range of powerful objections, explain its contribution to jurisprudence, and display its limitations and its modest jurisprudential significance. I also show how in its original formulations ILP depends on three notions that are either mistaken or inessential to law: the separability thesis, the rule of recognition, and the idea of criteria of legality. The first is false and is in event inessential to legal positivism. The second is inessential to legal positivism. The third is likely inessential to law. I then characterize the central claim of ILP in a way that relies on none of these: ILP is the claim that necessarily social facts determine the determinants of legal content. I show that ILP so conceived leaves the central debates in law largely untouched. I suggest how the most fundamental of these—the question of the normativity of law—at least can be usefully addressed. The essay closes by suggesting that even though one can distinguish the social from the normative dimensions of law, a theory of the nature of law is necessarily an account of the relationship between the two: It is a theory either of the difference that certain distinctive social facts make in normative space, or it is an account of the distinctive normative difference that law makes, and the social and other facts that are necessary to explain that difference. One can distinguish between but one cannot separate the social from the normative aspects of legality.     

Directives in EU Legal Systems: Whose Norms Are They Anyway?

This article is concerned with whether the concept of a legal system—long a centrepiece of state‐based legal theories—is a useful conceptual tool in theorising the contemporary EU and its legal relations with its Member States. The focus lies particularly with EU directives, and with what the character and operation of this distinctive type of EU norm can tell us as regards the existence of and relations between legal systems in the EU. I argue for the view that the EU is comprised of distinct but interacting legal systems at EU and national level, and claim that the character and operation of directives supports this view. Throughout the discussion I try to bring the conceptual tools of analytical legal philosophy to bear on puzzles generated by EU law and its relations with national law, in order to show that a sound analysis of aspects of the EU can benefit from abstract legal philosophical reflection, and vice versa.     

The Philosophy of Scandinavian Legal Realism

Abstract.  The jurisprudential movement known as Scandinavian Legal Realism was founded by the Swedish philosopher Axel Hägerström and the Danish philosopher and jurist Alf Ross in order to destroy the distorting influence of metaphysics upon legal thinking and to provide the secure philosophical foundation for scientific knowledge of the law. I shall present Hägerström's philosophical theory and argue that he is committed to the metaphysical view that the world in time and space consists of causal regularities between things and events devoid of any values that is related to his epistemological view that what there is can be known by experience. Hägerström's philosophy advances a naturalistic approach that conceives the positive law as a system of rules in terms of behavioural regularities among human beings and legal knowledge as an empirical inquiry into the causal relations between legal rules and human behaviour. This approach is followed by his pupils, the Swedish lawyers A. V. Lundstedt and Karl Olivecrona, whereas Ross appeals to logical positivism. The naturalistic approach should be taken seriously since it leaves no room for the normativity of the law and for legal knowledge in terms of reasons for belief and action.     

Practical‐Political Jurisprudence and the Dual Nature of Law

Law contains many dualities, though most, if not all, of these dualities resolve into one complex puzzle: To what extent is law a matter of pure social facts, or moral value untethered to social facts? I argue that each concept of law reconciles this duality in a different way on the basis of certain beneficial consequences that might result. Instead of pitting concepts against one another universally, we should accept that the balance between law's social fact and moral value dimensions is context‐specific in relation to particular legal puzzles. This balance can be achieved only by considering both political theory and empirical data.     

Workers with Disabilities Between Legal Changes and Persisting Exclusion: How Contradictory Rights Shape Legal Mobilization

It has become commonplace within disability sociolegal scholarship to argue that, in the last 30 years, a new legal and policy approach to disability has emerged, leading to a paradigm shift from a social protection framework to an antidiscrimination model. Some authors have stressed, however, that the new model has not fully replaced the older social protection approach. Yet little is still known about how the coexistence of these different models impacts on the everyday experience of disability in the workplace and on potential legal mobilization. Based on interviews with workers with disabilities who mobilized the law to obtain reasonable accommodation in Belgium combined with an analysis of evolving Belgian legal schemes relating to disability, this article explores how interactions between social, labor, and antidiscrimination rights shape legal mobilization of persons with disabilities in the workplace. We find that individual's initial self‐identification as workers or persons with disabilities influences how they frame their claim and the kind of legal norms they refer to in a first stage but that both their identification and their rights consciousness evolve and change through the course of legal mobilization as they interact with various professionals and navigate between the different concepts and rights available in current law.     

Coordinating in the Shadow of the Law: Two Contextualized Tests of the Focal Point Theory of Legal Compliance

In situations where people have an incentive to coordinate their behavior, law can provide a framework for understanding and predicting what others are likely to do. According to the focal point theory of legal compliance, the law's articulation of a behavior can sometimes create self‐fulfilling expectations that it will occur. Existing theories of legal compliance emphasize the effect of sanctions or legitimacy; we argue that, in addition to sanctions and legitimacy, law can also influence compliance simply by making one outcome salient. We tested this claim in two experiments where sanctions and legitimacy were held constant. Experiment 1 demonstrated that a mandatory legal rule operating in a property dispute influenced compliance only when there was an element of coordination. Experiment 2 demonstrated that a default rule in a contract negotiation acted as a focal point for coordinating negotiation decisions. Both experiments confirm that legal rules can create a focal point around which people tend to coordinate.     

The Dynamics of Legal Positivism. Some Remarks on Shiner's Norm and Nature

In a recently published book, Roger Shiner shows that understanding the fundamental discrepancies between different legal theories is important for a better understanding of law itself. He argues that one of the most important tasks of legal philosophers is to take into account the dynamics or conceptual movements generated by positivism and antipositivism. Our paper intends to show that Shiner's analysis can be developed and modified when other relevant elements are introduced into the universe of discourse. We emphasize the importance of a positivistic conception of legal science. According to Shiner, an adequate theory of law must reproduce the way in which legal norms work in the lives of the participants who accept the law. After analyzing the distinction between norms and norm propositions and the relationship between legal science and the external point of view, we show that legal positivism is not committed to reproducing the internal point of view to law.     

法定的债权移转之下的保险代位权制度的困境与选择

在以防止被保险人不当得利这一统一的价值引领之下,大陆与英美两大法系发展出法定的债权移转与权利法定代位两种不同的制度安排。由于不真正连带债务理论的局限,法定的债权移转无法有效地防止被保险人的不当得利,而权利法定代位则有助于克服前者所面临的困境,并以此成为一个相对优化的制度选择。我国目前的研究已经对法定的债权移转的困境展开初步的检讨,但是,其尚未对不真正连带债务这一基本理论构造进行深刻的批判。因此,当下的研究有必要上升到防止被保险人不当得利这一价值高度,由此证明不真正连带债务理论所构造的保险代位权制度存在着价值落空的困境,从而为我国当下保险代位权制度的重塑奠定基础。     

The One-System View and Dworkin’s Anti-Archimedean Eliminativism

Many of Dworkin’s interlocutors saw his ‘one-system view’, according to which law is a branch of morality, as a radical shift. I argue that it is better seen as a different way of expressing his longstanding view that legal theory is an inherently normative endeavor. Dworkin emphasizes that fact and value are separate domains, and one cannot ground claims of one sort in the other domain. On this view, legal philosophy can only answer questions from within either domain. We cannot ask metaphysical questions about which domain law ‘properly’ belongs in; these would be archimedean, and Dworkin has long argued against archimedeanism. The one-system view, then, is best understood as an invitation to join Dworkin in asking moral questions from within the domain of value. Finally, I argue that Dworkin’s view can be understood as a version of ‘eliminativism’, a growing trend in legal philosophy.

     

Judicial Practical Reason: Judges in Morally Imperfect Legal Orders

I here address the question of how judges should decide questions before a court in morally imperfect legal systems. I characterize how moral considerations ought inform judicial reasoning given that the law may demand what it has no right to. Much of the large body of work on legal interpretation, with its focus on legal semantics and epistemology, does not adequately countenance the limited legitimacy of actual legal institutions to serve as a foundation for an ethics of adjudication. I offer an adjudicative theory in the realm of non-ideal theory: I adopt a view of law that has achieved consensus in legal philosophy, make some plausible assumptions about human politics, and then consider directly the question of how judges should reason. Ultimately, I argue that judges should be cognizant of the goods that are at stake on particular occasions of adjudication and that this requires treating legal requirements transparently, i.e., as sensitive to their moral justifications.     

Epistemological Perspectives in Legal Theory

Abstract The authors deal with several important epistemological problems in legal theory. The Nineteenth century background is analyzed from the emergence of legal science freed from the constraints of natural law and built on the model of the empirical sciences. The authors show how this science of law has been influenced by the social sciences and trends in ideological criticism throughout the Twentieth century. The epistemological question central to legal science is tackled, i.e., what kind of “epistemological break” should there be with regard to the object studied? To answer this question, the authors plead for the adoption of a “moderate external point of view” which bears in mind lawyers' “internal point of view.”     

Leiter on the Legal Realists

In this essay reviewing Brian Leiter’s recent book Naturalizing Jurisprudence, I focus on two positions that distinguish Leiter’s reading of the American legal realists from those offered in the past. The first is his claim that the realists thought the law is only locally indeterminate – primarily in cases that are appealed. The second is his claim that they did not offer a prediction theory of law, but were instead committed to a standard positivist theory. Leiter’s reading is vulnerable, because he fails to discuss in detail those passages from the realists that inspired past interpretations. My goal is to see how Leiter’s reading fares when these passages are considered. I argue that Leiter is right that the realists’ indeterminacy thesis has only a local scope. Those passages that appear to claim that the law is globally indeterminate actually address three other topics: judicial supremacy, judges’ roles as finders of fact, and the moral obligation to adjudicate as the law commands. With respect to the prediction theory, however, I conclude that Leiter’s position cannot be defended. Indeed the realists offered two ‘prediction’ theories of law. According to the first, which is best described as a decision theory, the law concerning an event is whatever concrete judgment a court will issue when the event is litigated. According to the second, the law is reduced, not to concrete judgments, but to regularities of judicial (and other official) behavior in a jurisdiction. I end this essay with the suggestion that the realists’ advocacy of the second prediction theory indirectly vindicates Leiter’s reading of the realists as prescient jurisprudential naturalists.     

Legal Order,Legal Pluralism,Fundamental Principles. Europe and Its Law in Three Concepts

The essay analyses the way in which the concepts of legal order, legal pluralism and fundamental rights have been used to describe (and decide) what European integration is (and what it ought to be) from the perspective of the law. The essay does not provide a legal theory but limits itself to investigating how certain concepts have been employed to justify legal decisions and to construct legal theories. The juridical discourse on Europe is examined to identify some trends in contemporary legal culture: the decline of a tradition of legal thought, ‘legal dogmatics,’ the vanishing of the distinction between internal and external law (between domestic law and international law, and between positive law and morality), the growing importance of fundamental rights discourse, the centrality of balancing test, the widespread criticism of legal science's claim to neutrality and the consequent normative turn affecting legal scholarship.     

The Limits of Institutionalised Legal Discourse*

Abstract. One of the most powerful accounts of the necessary connection between law and morality grounded on the openness of communication is provided by Robert Alexy, who builds a discourse theory of law on the basis of Habermas’ theory of general practical discourse. In this article I argue that the thesis based on the openness of legal discourse is problematic in that it does not provide a convincing account of the differentiation of legal discourse from other practical discourses. I offer an understanding of the institutionalisation of legal discourse as the tacit commitment of the participants to their shared normative experience and in particular in: 1) the possibility of containing normative force in space, 2) the possibility of transforming word into deed, 3) the possibility of grasping and controlling time and 4) the possibility of transforming deed into word. That commitment of participants in legal discourse is revealed as a set of fundamental assumptions embedded in all legal utterances, which provide the necessary bedrock that makes communication possible. It also provides a basis for the institution of legal discourse, to the effect that their problematisation signifies a departure from the latter.