Legal Positivism, Law's Normativity, and the Normative Force of Legal Justification

In this article, I distinguish between a moral and a strictly legal conception of legal normativity, and argue that legal positivists can account for law's normativity in the strictly legal but not in the moral sense, while pointing out that normativity in the former sense is of little interest, at least to lawyers. I add, however, that while the moral conception of law's normativity is to be preferred to the strictly legal conception from the rather narrow viewpoint of the study of law's normativity, it is less attractive than the latter from the broader viewpoint of the study of the nature of law. I then distinguish between a moral and a strictly legal conception of the normative force of legal justification, and argue that legal positivists may without contradiction embrace the moral conception, and that therefore the analysis of the normative force of legal justification need not be a problem for legal positivists. I conclude that, on the whole, we have reason to prefer legal positivism to natural law theory. I begin by introducing the subject of jurisprudence (section 1). I then introduce the natural law/legal positivism debate, suggesting that we ought to understand it as a debate about the proper way to explicate the concept of law (section 2). I proceed to argue that legal decision-making is a matter of applying legal norms to facts, and that syllogistic reasoning plays a prominent role in legal decision-making thus conceived (section 3). Having done that, I discuss law's normativity (section 4), the normative force of legal justification (section 5), and the relation between the former and the latter (section 6). I conclude with a critical comment on Joseph Raz' understanding of the question of law's normativity (appendix).     

Remarks on the Normativity of International Legal Rules and Global Constitutionalism

The article reflects on the possibility of conceptualising the complex problem of the normativity of international legal rules, including in particular the phenomenon of “relative normativity.” The author utilises the critical potential of Ronald Dworkin's proposal for a new philosophy of international law to reflect on the classical accounts explaining normativity of international law. By building on Dworkin's argument, the author argues for a constitutional account of international law. The far‐reaching constitutional proposals may provide a more complex and coherent set of possible rationalisations of international legal rules. International law is in great need of a comprehensive theory that could better explain its normative character as well as its sources, and it is argued that international constitutionalism has the potential to serve this purpose.     

High Policing Theory and the Question of ‘What is to be Done?’

Within the field of high policing theory it has become increasingly difficult to pose the question of ‘What is to be done?’ in ways that do not result in a pragmatic accommodation of existing political arrangements. This essay proposes a way of reanimating the normative impulse of earlier high policing theory such that this outcome is exceeded. It does so by drawing upon Fredric Jameson’s distinction between representation and representation in motion, such that the emergent state of normativity takes the form of normativity as a representation of itself in motion. This form of normativity draws upon the performative character of the power that is particular to the practices associated with high policing. The proposition is illustrated with normative responses made to instances of political policing within the New Zealand context.     

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。     

Attitude and the normativity of law

Though legal positivism remains popular, HLA Hart’s version has fallen somewhat by the wayside. This is because, according to many, the central task of a theory of law is to explain the so-called ‘normativity of law’. Hart’s theory, it is thought, is not up to the task. Some have suggested modifying the theory accordingly. This paper argues that both Hart’s theory and the normativity of law have been misunderstood. First, a popular modification of Hart’s theory is considered and rejected. It stems from a misunderstanding of Hart and his project. Second, a new understanding of the mysterious but often-mentioned ‘normativity of law’ is presented. Once we have dispelled some misunderstandings of Hart’s view and clarified the sense in which law is supposed to be normative, we see that Hart’s view, unmodified, is well suited to the task of explaining law’s normativity.     

规范法学的方法构成及适用范围

规范法学的地位是由其方法论即规范分析方法奠定的。规范分析方法由合法性分析、规范性分析和实效性分析构成。合法性分析用来评价被分析的对象是否符合实在法;规范性分析用来检视法律权利语句和法律义务语句的清晰性和逻辑性;实效性分析用来判断逻辑语义上的法律秩序在多大程度上转化为实践行动中的法律秩序。规范分析方法一方面可在纯粹的规范法学领域进一步完善,另一方面也可超越规范法学领域,为其他学科研究对象提供方法论。     

Deon in Deontics

Abstract.
The starting point of deontic logic is the distinction between non-normative necessity and normative necessity. The first part of the paper shows that the distinction between normative necessity and non-normative necessity occurs already in Aristotle's Orgunon . The second part of the paper makes a further distinction within normative deon itself: The distinction between deontic deon and anankastic deon . Anankastic deon behaves differently from deontic deon in a very important respect: Deontic indifference has no anankastic counterpart.     

论法律规范性的概念与来源

法律规范性理论包括概念和来源两个不同的问题。概念要回答的是法律的规范性究竟意味着什么,特别是它与道德规范性之间存在何种联系与区别。来源问题则要说明法律为何具有此种规范性,关涉到法律作为一种规范性实践如何可能这一根本性问题。与道德相比,法律的规范性是一种弱规范性,它本身是一种道德主张,但它的来源却是独立于法律要求的道德正当性的。哈特和科尔曼等人基于法律人视角,将法律规范性问题转化为法律的效力来源问题,是对法律规范性的误解。承认规则只具有认识意义。法律本质上以权威性的方式有效消除合法性环境下的道德瑕疵的共享合作事业,法律的规范性来自于法律实现其道德目标的能力。     

法律原则的规范性研究

规范性主要是对合法权威与守法主体之间相互关系的一种认识。对理解规范性问题来说,规范性强度是一个重要的概念。法律原则的规范性追问这样两个问题：原则何以成为法律？为何具有指引、约束司法裁判的规范效力？法律原则的规范性包括形式渊源、价值理据、规范特征三个方面的意涵。对法律原则规范性的追问,考问着国家司法权威的公信力。法律原则构成了人之为人的主体性根基。晚近学界对分类式法概念的批判不能替代也不应阻断对法律原则的定性,即对法律原则规范性的追问。     

Melody and Law's Mindfulness of Time

Abstract. A structured awareness of time lies at the core of the law's distinctive normativity. Melody is offered as a rough model of this mindfulness of time, since some important features of this awareness are also present in a hearer's grasp of melody. The model of melody is used, first, to identify some temporal dimensions of intentional action and then to highlight law's mindfulness of time. Its role in the structure of legal thinking, and especially in precedent‐sensitive legal reasoning, is explored. This article argues further that melody‐modeled mindfulness of time is evident also at a deeper and more pervasive level, giving structure to the distinctive mode of law's normative guidance. The article draws one important theoretical consequence from this exploration, namely, that the normative coherence of momentary legal systems depends conceptually on their coherence over time.     

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.     

On the Nature of Norms

This paper deals with the question of how norms are to be conceived of in order to understand their role as guidelines for human action within various normative orders, particularly in the context of law on the one hand and conventional morality on the other. After some brief remarks on the history of the term “norm,” the author outlines the most significant general features of actually existing social norms, including legal and conventional norms, from which he arrives at two basic requirements on an appropriate conception of such norms: the actuality and the normativity requirements. On this basis, he enters into a critical discussion of Kelsen's highly influential view of norms, arguing that this view is doomed to failure. In the last part of the paper, the author scrutinizes the more promising “practice theory of norms” by H.L.A. Hart, which, in his view, also suffers from some shortcomings, but may be modified in a way that leads to a conception of social norms providing us with a plausible explication of their actual existence and their normative force.     

Human Rights: Existential,Not Metaphysical

My paper consists of four sections. The first is concerned with the distinction and connection between fundamental and human rights. Here I shall just introduce a few conceptual notions and definitions that are more or less widely used, but that may help us to frame the issue and better focus on the most relevant question of the foundation or justification of human rights. In the second and third sections I will present what I believe to be the four fundamental normative situations that shape our understanding and use of human rights. In the second section attention will focus on what in my opinion is the most basic of these four normative situations, which I call the “existential” situation. This is intended to offer a strong foundation for human rights as “not metaphysical,” without appealing to or relying on heavy metaphysical assumptions. I will try to stick more or less to an argumentative strategy based on common sense. The third section, dealing with the three other normative situations, will to some extent be an exercise in eclecticism, trying to combine different approaches to (and schools of thought on) the question of normativity. Here eclecticism will not be trivial, or at least I hope not. In the fourth and final section I will briefly conclude with a general overview on the issue of the “existence” of normativity and human rights.     

Can Informative Traffic Signs Also Be Obligatory? Polish Constitutional Tribunal and Supreme Court Versus Traffic Signs

This article discusses a rare instance of the highest national courts explicitly addressing traffic signs in their judgments or decisions. It critically examines the standpoint expressed by the Polish Constitutional Tribunal and the Supreme Court, according to which the basic traffic sign categories in Poland—obligatory, prohibitory, informative and warning—are not separable (not disjunctive) [e.g. prima facie non-normative signs (informative or warning) can also be normative (obligatory or prohibitory)]. These courts formulated this idea when addressing the legal question concerning the applicability of legal provision penalizing failure to comply with a traffic sign to parking a car without paying a fee in an area marked by an informative sign that indicates the need to charge a fee for parking. The article analyses and criticizes the relevant standpoint of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal and the Supreme Court. It shows how many negative consequences can result from frivolous treatment and neglect of traffic signs. It also reconstructs some possible practical recommendations concerning not only traffic signs but also visualizations of legal rules in general.     

“Truly free consent”? Clarifying the nature of police legitimacy using causal mediation analysis

Journal of Experimental Criminology - To test whether normative and non-normative forms of obligation to obey the police are empirically distinct and to assess whether they exhibit different...     

Unveiling White logic in criminological research: an intertextual analysis

Critical race scholars have called into question the objective neutrality upon which much positivist social science rests, arguing that it discursively masks how whiteness underpins the normative purview of research design and findings. As the scholarly securing of whiteness takes shape through explicit and discursive mechanisms, this article examines how it is manifest in criminological research through an intertextual analysis of contemporary peer-reviewed scholarship. Examining 558 articles in five recognized journals, this paper documents how blind spots towards race and racial stratification surface in criminological research, arguing that most of the articles analyzed do not simply ignore White privilege; they actively uphold it. Findings suggest that they do so through two means: first by whitewashing race, that is, disregarding how race and racism can differentially affect acts and trends of crime and deviance, and secondly, by narrowly representing race as merely explanatory variable without querying the broader power relations it marks. After discussing how these patterns reveal and uphold whiteness as a normative value, we conclude with a discussion of preliminary steps aimed at exposing and unpacking how White logic informs the field.     

Non‐Individualism,Rights, and Practical Reason

Abstract. The paper looks at an impasse with respect to the role of rights as reasons for action which afflicts contemporary legal and political debates. Adopting a meta‐ethical approach, it moves on to argue that the impasse arises from a philosophical confusion surrounding the role of rights as normative reasons. In dispelling the confusion, an account of reasons is put forward that attempts to capture their normativity by relating them to a reflexive public practice. Two key outcomes are identified as a result of this explication: first, that normative practices are instances of rule‐following; and second, that agents partaking of normative practices possess absolute value (i.e., acquire the status of persons). In light of this explication, rights acquire the status of the most general reasons that purport to guarantee the content of personhood by specifying and safeguarding conditions which enable agents to participate in public practices of universalisation.     

Hart's and Kelsen's Concepts of Normativity Contrasted*

Abstract. Hart's and Kelsen's respective outlooks on the concept of normativity not only differ by the way they explain this concept but also, more importantly, in what they seek to achieve when endeavouring to account for the normative dimension of law. By examining Hart's and Kelsen's models in the light of Korsgaard's understanding of the “normativity problem,” my aim is to emphasise not only their contrasted perspectives, but also the common limit they impose on their theories by dismissing as inappropriate any question regarding the emergence of legal normativity. On the basis of my previous arguments, I shall explain why I deem Raz's analysis of the contrast between Hart's and Kelsen's conceptions of normativity to be misleading.     

论规范性文件不予一并审查:判断要素及其认定规则——基于1799份裁判文书的分析

规范性文件“能否一并审查”是对规范性文件合法性进行实质审查的先决问题。根据现有的制度规定,可将司法实践中规范性文件不予一并审查的类型划分为基础性要件缺失、附带性要件缺失和例外情形等三类,每种类型都包含多种情形和不同判断要素。法院应当采取更加积极宽容的态度,尽可能地将更多的规范性文件纳入一并审查的范围。对于不予一并审查的规范性文件的认定,应当在区分规范性文件与非规范性文件的基础上,综合运用多种认定标准明确界定规范性文件排除审查的范围。应当赋予第三人一并审查的请求主体资格,并明确当事人延迟提出一并审查请求“正当理由”的判断标准。对于不予一并审查例外情形的认定,应审慎对待,严格约束法院司法裁量权的行使。