What is law? The usual answer is that the law is a system of norms. But this answer gives us at best half of the story. The law is a way of relating to one another. We do not do this as lovers or friends and not as people who are interested in obtaining guidance from moral insight. In a legal context, we are cast as 'character masks' (Marx), for example, as 'buyer' and 'seller' or 'landlord' and 'tenant'. We expect to have our claims respected simply because the law has given us rights. We...

Originally the constitution was expected to express and channel popular sovereignty. It was the work of freedom, springing from and facilitating collective self-determination. After the Second World War this perspective changed: the modern constitution owes its authority not only to collective authorship, it also must commit itself credibly to human rights. Thus people recede into the background, and the national constitution becomes embedded into one or other system of 'peer review' among...

Juristische Experten geben mit ernster Miene zu verstehen, wer Rechte und Pflichten hat. Sie machen uns glauben, dass sie das tatsächlich wissen. Die Rechtstheorie geht der Frage auf den Grund, ob man diesen Wissensanspruch ernst nehmen kann. Nicht zufällig entsteht sie als Disziplin aus der Erschütterung des intellektuellen Selbstvertrauens der etablierten Rechtswissenschaft. Diese Erschütterung setzt an der Wende vom neunzehnten zum zwanzigsten Jahrhundert ein und dauert bis heute fort...

Die Grundfrage der Rechtsphilosophie lautet: Darf das, was wir oder andere für unmoralisch halten, dennoch für uns oder andere verbindlich sein? Die Bedingungen, unter denen dies zulässig ist, machen das "Rechtsverhältnis" aus. In einem derartigen Verhältnis räumen wir einander Rechte ein, die gegen unseren Willen durchgesetzt werden können. Welche Rechte dies sein sollen, ist philosophisch und politisch umstritten. Zur Schlichtung der betreffenden Kontroversen gibt es den demokratischen V...

This book defends the relational approach to law.It begins by exploring how law is constituted in the context of either rational or reasonable conduct. Having identified reasonableness as the unifying theme of natural law theories, it argues that the form and authority of law originate in the practical resolution of a moral antinomy that these theories leave unaddressed.The reasonableness of law lies in the structure and principles of relations in which rig...

This book provides a selective and somewhat cheeky account of prominent positions in legal theory, such as American legal realism, modern legal positivism, sociological systems theory, institutionalism and critical legal studies. It presents a relational approach to law and a new perspective on legal sources.The book explores topics of legal theory in a playful manner. It is written and composed in a way that refutes the widespread prejudice that legal theory is a dreary subject, w...

Die Edition "Ius Publicum Europaeum" behandelt das Verfassungsrecht nebst Verfassungsprozessrecht und das Verwaltungsrecht im Lichte des gemeinsamen europäischen Rechtsraums. Dargestellt werden die Grundstrukturen der nationalen Verfassungen und deren Wissenschaft in repräsentativ ausgewählten Mitgliedstaaten der Europäischen Union, darunter die Gründerstaaten Deutschland, Frankreich und Italien. Die Idee dieses Handbuchs ist es, die unter dem Einfluss des europäischen Rechts stehenden nat...

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2008 im Fachbereich Jura - Sonstiges, Note: 2,0, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg (Institut für Rechswissenschaften), Veranstaltung: Neuere Entwicklung der Rechts- und Staatsphilosophie , Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: „Das Recht ist kompliziert. Es ist unübersichtlich. Es ist unverständlich. Das Recht existiert nicht, ohne durch rechtliches Wissen vermittelt zu sein. Eine Theorie des Rechtes hat daher eine Theorie rechtlichen Wissens zu sein.“ Mit diesen Worte...

In the fourth volume of the Vienna Lectures on Legal Philosophy, scholars in contemporary jurisprudence and constitutional theory discuss who gets to decide and who gets to act when constitutional law is silent or fundamentally controversial.It is the very purpose of Constitutions to settle disagreements: to determine who gets to decide and who gets to act when it comes to the polity and its members. But what if, instead of settling disagreements among tho...

This second volume of the Vienna Lectures on Legal Philosophy series presents 11 chapters which are dedicated to normativist and anti-normativist approaches to law.The book focuses on the question: What is law? Is it a set of obligations imposed on courts and officials to guide their conduct and to assess the conduct of others? Or is it the result of settlements reached by opposing sides that accept arrangements and understandings to sustain peaceful cooperation?If...

The first volume of the Vienna Lectures on Legal Philosophy illustrates the remarkable scope of contemporary legal philosophy. It introduces methodological questions rooted in national academic discourses, discusses the origin of legal systems, and contrasts constitutionalist and monist approaches to the rule of law with the institutionalist approach most prominently and vigorously defended by Carl Schmitt. The issue at the core of these topics is which of these perspectives is mo...

The third volume of the Vienna Lectures on Legal Philosophy series focuses on one of the most fiercely contested issues in contemporary legal philosophy: the question of the importance of legal reasoning and how to properly engage with it.This book considers legal reasoning from two different angles: it revolves, on the one hand, around debates concerning interpretation and balancing, but it also asks, on the other, whom we ought to entrust with decision-m...