In her book "Internal" Legal Positivism, Cristina Redondo attempts to articulate the metatheoretical presuppositions of an approach directed to the study of law that explains its specific normative character. In doing so, she argues for two main theses: (i) legal norms necessarily constitute reasons in a formal sense, regardless of the substantive correctness of the content they express; and (ii) the theory of law can be morally neutral with respect to its object. This means that, according to Redondo, it is possible to formulate purely descriptive statements that refer to the content of the law; that is, it is possible to formulate them from a point of view that does not presuppose the acceptance of that content. In formulating her arguments, the author focuses on an ambiguity inherent in the distinction between internal and external points of view, and she uses some of the theses developed by Eugenio Bulygin and Fernando Atria to introduce nuances that lead us to her own theses about law and a possible approach to the study of law. The fruitfulness of Cristina Redondo's book makes it the subject of a symposium in which some of the theses of her book are critically examined. The symposium began in Revus (2020) 42 with five contributions in Spanish, continued in Revus (2021) 44 with one contribution in Spanish, and closes in this issue, which includes English translations and the author's response to the critiques.
Constitutional scholars are concerned with the pressing issues that liberal democracies face today and thus strive to rethink and improve the theory and practice of constitutionalism accordingly. By bringing together leading experts in constitutional and political theory to discuss relevant issues of constitutional government and democratic theory, this symposium on Visions of Constitutionalism responds to that concern.
Readers of Revus will enjoy a wide range of novel approaches to constitutionalism. Bringing fresh ideas to the fore, rethinking core debates and developing key ideas in constitutional theory and practice, the sysmposium unfolds in two issues of Revus. In the previous issue, our contributors originally point out challenges and shortcomings of contemporary constitutional theory, dealing with them in ways that develop fruitful new philosophical lines of constitutional thought. In this issue, our authors pose urgent questions of institutional design and shed light on how to make different views of constitutionalism work, ranging from theoretical proposals on how to institutionalize different forms of constitutionalism to relevant analysis on the institutional instantiations of constitutional theories presenting themselves as alternatives to more traditional approaches which underscore the role of constitutions as curbs on majoritarian political power.
We hope the symposium will help readers assess whether or to what extent our received views of constitutionalism and institutional design are fit for the purpose of tackling current political challenges to liberal democracies. Examining sundry relevant problems of constitutional theory and practice, our contributors present an ample breadth of perspectives that will add to the existing literature on constitutionalism and contribute to pushing the field of constitutional thought forward in relevant and original ways.
Constitutional scholars are concerned with the pressing issues that liberal democracies face today and thus strive to rethink and improve the theory and practice of constitutionalism accordingly. By bringing together leading experts in constitutional and political theory to discuss relevant issues of constitutional government and democratic theory, this symposium on Visions of Constitutionalism responds to that concern.
Readers of Revus will enjoy a wide range of novel approaches to constitutionalism. Bringing fresh ideas to the fore, rethinking core debates and developing key ideas in constitutional theory and practice, the symposium unfolds in two issues of Revus. In this issue our contributors originally point out challenges and shortcomings of contemporary constitutional theory, dealing with them in ways that develop fruitful new philosophical lines of constitutional thought. In the next issue, our authors pose urgent questions of institutional design and shed light on how to make different views of constitutionalism work, ranging from theoretical proposals on how to institutionalize different forms of constitutionalism to relevant analysis on the institutional instantiations of constitutional theories presenting themselves as alternatives to more traditional approaches which underscore the role of constitutions as curbs on majoritarian political power.
We hope the symposium will help readers assess whether or to what extent our received views of constitutionalism and institutional design are fit for the purpose of tackling current political challenges to liberal democracies. Examining sundry relevant problems of constitutional theory and practice, our contributors present an ample breadth of perspectives that will add to the existing literature on constitutionalism and contribute to pushing the field of constitutional thought forward in relevant and original ways.
Kenneth Einar Himma's Coercion and the Nature of Law (OUP 2020) is the second volume of the planned four volume series on the metaphysical nature of law.
The book’s focus is the defense of the Coercion Thesis, which states that for something to count as a legal system, as far as our conceptual practices are concerned, it is a necessary condition that it includes norms governing official behavior that authorize courts to impose coercive sanctions as a response to non-compliance with mandatory norms governing non-official behavior. Furthermore, the thesis is used to shed light on the problem of law’s normativity, understood as the capability of persuading rationally competent subjects to behave in a certain way.
The methodological approach of the book, described by the author as “metaphysically driven conceptual analysis”, is based on Frank Jackson’s “modest” approach to conceptual analysis. Himma starts by identifying ordinary lexical meanings of the terms and proceeds to explain them. This amounts to cashing out the underlying assumptions about the metaphysical nature of the thing to which the term refers. For artifacts, which Himma maintains law is, this also includes specifying their conceptual function.
While the Coercion Thesis is historically not a radical view, it has received unfavorable treatment from some of the most influential modern philosophers, making Himma's sophisticated defense a worthwhile contribution to the discussion. A symposium in this issue of Revus contains seven comments in which Himma’s methodological assumptions and substantial conclusions are critically examined. These comments will be followed by the author’s response.
Visa Kurki’s A Theory of Legal Personhood (OUP 2019) represents one of the highlights of the recent legal theoretical and doctrinal interest in legal personhood. Kurki’s book pursues two fundamental goals: on the one hand, to critically analyse the traditional understanding of legal personhood in Western legal culture – a view he calls ‘The Orthodox View’; and, on the other hand, to develop a new, general theory of legal personhood, approaching legal personhood as a cluster concept.
This Symposium features six contributions by Brunello Stancioli, Raffael N. Fasel, Ngaire Naffine, Raimo Siltala, Maija Aalto-Heinilä and Juha Karhu, and Paweł Banaś, as well as Kurki’s rejoinder.
In her book "Internal" Legal Positivism, Cristina Redondo attempts to articulate the metatheoretical presuppositions of an approach directed to the study of law that explains its specific normative character. In doing so, she argues for two main theses: (i) legal norms necessarily constitute reasons in a formal sense, regardless of the substantive correctness of the content they express; and (ii) the theory of law can be morally neutral with respect to its object. This means that, according to Redondo, it is possible to formulate purely descriptive statements that refer to the content of the law; that is, it is possible to formulate them from a point of view that does not presuppose the acceptance of that content. In formulating her arguments, the author focuses on an ambiguity inherent in the distinction between internal and external points of view, and she uses some of the theses developed by Eugenio Bulygin and Fernando Atria to introduce nuances that lead us to her own theses about law and a possible approach to the study of law. The fruitfulness of Cristina Redondo's book makes it the subject of a symposium in which some of the theses of her book are critically examined. The symposium begins in this issue of Revus with five contributions in Spanish and will continue in a future issue, which will include English translations of all contributions and the author's response to the critiques.
En su libro Positivismo jurídico “interno”, Cristina Redondo busca articular los presupuestos meta-teóricos de un enfoque dirigido al estudio del derecho, que explique su específico carácter normativo. En esta tarea, dirigirá sus argumentos a defender dos tesis principales: (i) que las normas jurídicas constituyen necesariamente una razón en sentido formal, independientemente de la corrección sustancial de los contenidos que expresen; y (ii) que la teoría del derecho puede ser moralmente neutral respecto de su objeto. Esto implica que para Redondo es posible formular enunciados referidos al contenido del derecho puramente descriptivos; esto es, desde un punto de vista que no presupone su aceptación. En la articulación de sus argumentos la autora se centrará en la ambigüedad que plantea la distinción entre punto de vista interno/punto de vista externo, y se valdrá de algunas de las tesis desarrolladas por Eugenio Bulygin y Fernando Atria, para introducir matices que nos llevarán a sus propias tesis sobre el derecho y una vía posible para su estudio. El carácter fecundo de las ideas contenidas en el libro de Cristina Redondo lo hace destinatario de un simposio en Revus en el que se discuten algunas de las tesis sostenidas en su libro. El simposio inicia en este número y continuará en uno próximo, en el cual, además, se incluirá una respuesta a las críticas por parte de la propia autora.