Rights, Performatives, and Promises in Karl Olivecrona's Legal Theory

Abstract.  Karl Olivecrona (1971 ) maintains that "right" is a "hollow word," and so also for some other legal terms. "Right," he says, "has no conceptual background." He arrives at this position after an examination of metaphysical and naturalistic accounts, including American legal realism. Some of Olivecrona's arguments will be evaluated here. His position is influenced by Hägerström's theory of legal language, but he argues that Hägerström fails to account for how such terms as "right,""duty," etc. function in legal discourse and why they are useful. A parallel approach is also found in Olivecrona's book The Problem of the Monetary Unit (1957 ). Olivecrona is left with the problem of how such "hollow" terms function. His explanation is largely psychological. Going beyond J. L. Austin's notion of performatory language, he introduces the idea of performatory imperatives. I propose to submit Olivecrona's approach to a critical examination. It is suggested that had he started from everyday, nonlegal promises and commitments he might well have ended up with a different theory of legal language.     

Alf Ross on the Nature of Law

In his work, On Law and Justice, Alf Ross sought to explain law in scientific/empirical terms, in terms that would require no recourse to what he called “metaphysics” or “idealism.” The result is a sort of translation of legal rules and official actions into propositions of behavior, predictions of behavior, and shared ideology. The present work raises questions about the tensions within Ross's work(s), and discusses the places where Ross's analysis seems to fall short of its ambitions. In the course of the discussion, the article considers issues relating to legal mistake, explanations of judicial behavior, and different types of normativity.     

Putting interpretation in its place

What can a philosophical analysis of the concept of interpretation contribute to legal theory? In his recent book,Interpretation and Legal Theory, Andrei Marmor proposes a complex and ambitious analysis as groundwork for his positivist assault on “interpretive” theories of law and of language. I argue (i) that the crucial element in Marmor's analysis of interpretation is his treatment of Ludwig Wittgenstein's remarks on following rules, and (ii) that a less ambitious analysis of interpretation than Marmor's can take better advantage of those insights about rules. I explore some implications of such an analysis for the role of interpretation in legal reasoning.     

History in the Law of the Constitution

This article addresses the diminution of historical understanding in English constitutional law by reconsidering Dicey's approach to history in his foundational work. It argues that Dicey's approach was inconsistent and unconvincing – separating a historical view of an evolving constitution from a legal view, discounting history's legal significance and nonetheless repeatedly evoking a whig history to enhance the appeal of the constitution's rules and principles. It recalls the features or deficiencies of whig history, famously characterised by Herbert Butterfield from a modern historical perspective. To Butterfield's characterisation it adds an elaboration on their constitutional significance and a neglected comparative dimension. From those features, it develops, in conclusion, methodological suggestions for a history that might yet serve constitutional legal purposes.     

Some Myth about Realism

This paper discusses the place of philosophical naturalism in the philosophy of law, with special reference to Scandinavian Realism. Hägerström originated a non‐cognitivist analysis of certain fundamental legal concepts, but he also proposed an error theory. The two approaches are incompatible, but were not always clearly distinguished. Among his followers, Olivecrona and Ross gradually abandoned the latter, at least from the late 1940s. Many accounts of their views are unclear, because the presence of these two kinds of analysis, their incompatibility, and the gradual abandonment of one, has often been overlooked. A corollary of the discussion is that there are some important corrigenda in the entry “Naturalism in legal philosophy” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.     

法律实证主义与规范理论——规范性的三个难题

在现代法律理论中,规范性既意味着法律对行为的影响,也用以表达有别于事实的另一世界。有关法律规范性的争议可分解为三个相互关联的理论难题:制裁与义务是否具有同样的规范作用?是否只有一般性的法律规则才具有规范性?哲学实证主义与法律实证主义对规范性的理解是否相同?通过思考这些难题可以得出结论:规范问题不同于价值问题,法律实证主义能够在探讨规范问题时坚持价值无涉的立场;法律的规范性不能化约为唯一一种规范作用,对此有必要进行更加精致的研究。     

道义朝鲜与征兵制度——二战时期“尾高法哲学”的一个侧面

尾高朝雄是20世纪日本法哲学史上一位有着重大影响的学者。随着日本战后民主化改革和民主主义法学的强固,曾经扮演了迎合日本军国主义并从法哲学角度对其进行理论包装的尾高在二战时期任职朝鲜京城大学(现在的首尔大学)教授期间的著作,作为"尾高法哲学"的一个侧面,在当今的日本法哲学界,已经被打入历史冷宫而鲜有能够问津之人了。但法律实证主义何以会与纳粹、帝国主义等带来人类惨重悲剧的国家行为相关联、法哲学家本应有的独立思考和学术批判精神何以会丧失,在这些问题意识的拷问之下,尾高和其他著名的使法哲学沦为政治的御用哲学、从而应当深刻反思和忏悔的学者一样,毫无疑问是一个有着特殊研究价值的学术个案。     

法官法律知识的本源与确证——以法官的实践理性为视角

法律作为一门独立的体系知识而与其他知识区别开来是人类社会分工及知识分化的必然结果。法律知识具有其内在价值,对于法官来说,法律知识本身就是一个自为的目的。法官的知识就是对于正义等理念的沉思。法官必须具有将抽象的法律规范同特殊的个案事件联系起来的司法技巧与方法。法官必须要精通法学领域内的相关法律、法规的理论修养。法官的司法实践必须以法律知识为前提。法官既是法律知识系统,同时也是司法行动系统。确认法律具有普遍的适用性,法官应该理性地思考,在现代法律规范中,所有的规定都应该与人类理性的基本价值、人类行为的实践合理性等基本要求相一致。确认法律必须体现自治的原则。法官要力求达到掌握最完全的法律知识,力求达到最高层次的法的确定性追求。     

H. L. A. Hart on Legal Obligation*

Abstract. The author discusses Hart's concept of legal obligation, especially his contention that there is an obligation to obey the law which is peculiarly legal, i.e., non-moral. This view is held to be mistaken. What is denied is that legal rules, merely by their being issued, offer a justification for the use of coercion to ensure compliance with them. Although moral and other social (customary) rules are considered self-justifying, that is not the case of legal rules. Any analogy between these two types of rules in justifying their implementation by force is deemed wrong.**     

Rules of Power and the Power of Rules

Abstract
The paper describes at length and then discusses critically Frederick Schauer's analysis of rules in his recent book Playing By the RuZes . For most of the book Schauer discusses rules in general, and only at the end talks about legal rules in particular. The chief message of Schauer's analysis is that rules permit, and even constitute, a particular kind of decision-making, one that quite deliberately insulates the decision-taker from considerations of what would be in the circumstances the best justified decision to take. Rules are thus for Schauer devices for the allocation of decision-making power: The effect of A delegating to B the power to decide by a set of rules devised by A is that A retains much control over B 's decision-making. Schauer canvasses the claims of what he calls "presumptive positivism" to be a theory of law which embodies such a view of legal rules. In his criticism, the author compares Schauer's view with Joseph Raz's notion of legal rules as exclusionary reasons. The author then compares "presumptive positivism" with some other recent versions of positivism and the idea of rules as devices for the allocation of power with theories of law in the Critical Legal Studies movement.     

One Myth of the Classical Natural Law Theory: Reflecting on the “Thin” View of Legal Positivism

Much controversy has emerged on the demarcation between legal positivism and non‐legal positivism with some authors calling for a ban on the ‐as they see it‐ nonsensical labelling of legal philosophical debates. We agree with these critics; simplistic labelling cannot replace the work of sophisticated and sound argumentation. In this paper we do not use the term ‘legal positivism’ as a simplistic label but identify a specific position which we consider to be the most appealing and plausible view on legal positivism. This is the view advocated by Gardner in his paper 'Legal Positivism: 5½ Myths’ (Gardner 2001 , 199), where he carefully scrutinises the most convincing and unifying postulates of legal positivism, which he calls “the thin view”. The study shows that this thin view presupposes an empirical conception of action that is untenable and implausible since it makes acts of engagement with the law unintelligible to an observer of such acts.     

Dazed and Confused: Accidental Mixtures of Goods and the Theory of Acquisition of Title

This paper explores the law of accidental mixtures of goods. It traces the development of the English rules on mixture from the seminal nineteenth century case of Spence v Union Marine Insurance Co to the present day, and compares their responses to those given by the Roman law, which always has been claimed as an influence on our jurisprudence in this area. It is argued that the different answers given by English and Roman law to essentially the same problems of title result from the differing bases of these legal systems. Roman a priori theory is contrasted with the more practical reasoning of the common law, and while both sets of rules are judged to be coherent on their own terms, it is suggested that the difference between them is reflective of a more general philosophical disagreement about the proper functioning of a legal system, and the relative importance of theoretical and pragmatic considerations.     

The Purpose of Legal Theory: Some Problems with Joseph Raz’s View

This article seeks to clarify Joseph Raz’s contention that the task of the legal theorist is to explain the nature of law, rather than the concept of law. For Raz, to explain the nature of law is to explain the necessary properties that constitute it, those which if absent law would cease to be what it is. The first issue arises regarding his ambiguous usage of the expression “necessary property”. Concurrently Raz affirms that the legal theorist has the following tasks: (a) explain the essential properties of that which the concept of law refers to, which exists independently from any concept of law; (b) explain the essential properties of law given our concept of law. After trying to dissolve the ambiguity of Raz’s argument, I conclude that based on his methodological commitments the only possible task for a legal philosopher would be conceptual analysis, understood as the task of explaining our concept of law.     

Selznick Interviewed: Philip Selznick in Conversation with Roger Cotterrell

Philip Selznick enjoys world-wide respect as a sociologist and, unusually among prominent contemporary sociological theorists, he has made law a main focus of his work. A leading pioneer of Anglo-American legal sociology since the 1950s, he has pursued a distinctive scholarly approach, founded in Deweyan pragmatism, that treats ideals and values as fundamental concerns of social science, integral to its methods and aims. This orientation was first developed in his work in the sociology of organizations and is central to his sociology of law and to his writings since the 1980s on communitarianism, which combine philosophical and sociological analysis.     

Iudex in Fabula: Some Reflections on Jackson's Paper

The key issue of this paper is that Professor Jackson's attempt to shednew light on the notion of literal meaning is both stimulating andunconvincing. On the one hand he is perfectly right when he tries todraw attention to the shortcomings which affect most of the longstandingtheories about legal interpretation. In fact, his essay is based on thefooting that interpretation is under-determined by semantic rules andconventions. From such a point of view, as both rule-scepticism and thesemantic conception are old fashioned and unsound, we need acomprehensive theory of textual structures. On the other hand, however,Professor Jackson concedes too much to rule-scepticism with hisnarrative approach. Furthermore, his too sharp opposition between themodern Western model of law, mainly a written law where so-called``literal meaning' is of the greatest importance (at least on anideological ground), and the model of early Biblical law, where themeaning stems from the social context, does not hold completely. It iseasy to find legal systems, for instance the later rabbinic law, whichneither of Jackson's two models can explain, since the reality of law isfar more complex than we believe.     

Positivism, Idealism and the Rule of Law

The modern lawyer operates within a conception of law as a bodyof rules. To confront the law of contract, of torts, or of property,is to familiarize oneself with an intricate set of rules. Suchfamiliarity is not yet legal scholarship, much less legal practice.For in order to use the rules as lawyers use them, the rulesmust be contemplated and considered, and the relationship betweenthe different rules must be understood. Because the intellectualprocesses involved in handling the rules exhibit a high degreeof sophistication, those intellectual processes may themselvesbecome the subject matter of philosophical argument. Thus wemay regard jurisprudential theories as embodying differing understandingsof the processes of handling legal rules; and we may conceiveof legal theory as the attempt to grasp the moral significanceof rules as a foundation for social order. This essay shalloffer some thoughts on the relationship between the rule oflaw, considered as a moral ideal, and the notion of rules asthe principal means by which legal order is manifested.     

About the Meaning of the Legal Aspect of Practical Semantics in Estonian Legal Order

This article is aimed at regarding, from the author’s viewpoint, one possible jurisprudential theory for rational understanding of legal order – the structuring theory of law. It is very important that cognition of a legal order should be based on the rules which could be designated as “laws of jurisprudence”. Naturally, this does not mean legislation within the concept of objective law. Rather, these laws can be referred to as certain regularities, ignorance of which would, however, either impossibly or substantially complicate the legal process of decision-making, both in law-making (as the so-called decisional function is contained in law itself¹) or the practical legal process of making decisions (the application of law). In recent years, a conception involving cooperation between linguists and jurists has emerged in the discussion of jurisprudential methodology. This constitutes an interdisciplinary approach to motivation of legal decision-making and involves, on the one hand, “practical semantics” and researchers thereof,² and on the other hand, representatives of the so-called structuring theory of law.³ In specialist literature, the structuring theory of law has also been referred to as the Müller Schoo1.⁴ The role of language and linguistic arguments in the discussion and practice of legal working methods serves as a connective principle in such interdisciplinary approach (co-operation).     

卢埃林现实主义法理学思想

以卡尔.卢埃林关于现实主义法理学及其研究方法与立场、怀疑规则的确定性、强调对行为与法律实施的研究、区分"实然"与"应然"以及法的形成与功能等方面的论述与阐释为依据,可以较为全面地介绍并评价这位美国现实主义法学运动的著名代表人物的法理学思想,同时可以澄清与纠正各种流行的关于卢埃林的误解和曲解。