Reason, Democracy, Society: A Study on the Basis of Legal Thinking

252 Pages·1996·9.031 MB·English

by  Sebastian Urbina (auth.)

REASON, DEMOCRACY, SOCIETY
Law and Philosophy Library
VOLUME 25
Managing Editors
ALEKSANDER PECZENIK, Department ofL aw, University ofL und
FREDERICK SCHAUER, John F. Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Former Managing Editors
ALAN MABE, MICHAEL D. BAYLESt, CONRAD D. JOHNSONt
Editorial Advisory Board
AULIS AARNIO, Research Institute for Social Sciences,
University of Tampere, Box 607, SF 33101 Tampere, Finland
ROBERT ALEXY, LehrstuhljUr Offentliches Recht und Rechtsphilosophie,
Christian Albrechts-Universitiit, Kiel
GEORGE P. FLETCHER, School ofL aw, Columbia University
ERNESTO GARZON VALDES, lnstitut jUr Politikwissenschaft,
Johannes Gutenberg Universitiit Mainz
JOHN KLEINIG, Department ofL aw, Police Science and Criminal
Justice Administration, John Jay College of Criminal Justice,
City University ofN ew York
NICOLA LACEY, Birkbeck College, London
ALAN MABE, Department of Philosophy, Florida State University
NEIL MacCORMICK, Centre for Criminology and the Social and
Philosophical Study ofL aw, Faculty ofL aw, University of Edinburgh
NIGEL SIMMONDS, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University
ROBERT S. SUMMERS, School ofL aw, Cornell University
ALICE ERH-SOON TA Y, Faculty ofL aw, University ofS ydney
CARL WELLMAN,DepartmentofPhilosophy, Washington University
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
SEBASTIAN URBINA
University o/Balearic Island.
Palma de Mallorca. Spain
REASON,
DEMOCRACY,
SOCIETY
A Study on the Basis of Legal Thinking
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-90-481-4759-5 ISBN 978-94-017-2846-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-2846-1
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved
© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1996
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
To Jacqueline
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface .......................................... , 1
Synopsis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 3
Introduction ....................................... 6
Chapter 1. Which Positivism? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 25
1.1 The Separation of Law and Morals .................. 25
1.2 Natural Justice? .............................. " 30
1.3 Fidelity to Law and its Hard Core ................. " 32
1.4 Judges, Goodness and Regularities ................. " 35
1.5 Law, Morals and Interpretation ..................... 43
Chapter 2. Analysis and Ideology ...................... 50
2.1 Law as a Language ............................. 50
2.2 A Dualistic Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 53
2.3 Legal Language and Neutrality ..................... 56
2.4 Linguistic Frame, Ontology and Context .............. 59
Chapter 3. On Legal Rationality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 64
3.1 General Assumptions of Judicial Rationality . . . . . . . . . . .. 64
3.2 Concrete Assumptions of the Judicial Task:
Justice of the Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 67
3.3 Legal Certainty ................................ 69
3.4 Legal Scholars and Legal Dogmatics ... . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 70
3.5 Justice and Coherence ........................... 74
3.6 The Parties and the Process ....................... 78
3.7 The Rational and the Reasonable. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 79
viii TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 4. Legal Reasoning and Formal Criteria of
Recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 82
4.1 A Genuine Legal Positivism ..................... " 82
4.2 Natural Lawyers and Positivism .................... 85
4.3 A Correct View without Correctness ................. 87
4.4 Views and Truths .............................. 89
4.5 To "Belong" to a System ......................... 91
4.6 The Insufficiency of a Formal "Belong" ............. " 94
4.7 Underpinning Reasons and Genuine Positivism ........ " 96
4.8 Law, Positivism and the Judiciary ...... ~ ............ 100
4.9 Internal, Hermeneutical, External .................... 103
4.10 Judge's Duties ................................. 107
4.11 Principles .................................... 110
4.12 Rule of Recognition, Underpinning Reasons and Principles . 114
4.13 Identification, Description and Evaluation .............. 117
4.14 Law, Discretion and Disagreements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
4.15 Identification, Correctness and Decision ............... 123
4.16 The Limits of the Limits ......................... 127
Chapter 5. The Latest Buchanan; Efficiency and Ethics ...... 135
5.1 Individualism and Relativism ...................... 135
5.2 A "Prudent" Homo Economicus .................... 137
5.3 Truth and Agreements ........................... 139
5.4 Spontaneous Order and Politics ..................... 143
5.5 Rational Constructions and Natural Processes ........... 145
5.6 A New Morality? .............................. 146
5.7 The Third Way ................................ 150
TABLE OF CONTENTS ix
Chapter 6. Are Human Rights Universal? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
6.1 Old Limits and New Problems ..................... 154
6.2 Human Rights, Democracy and Peace ................ 155
6.3 Human Rights: Obedience and Protection .............. 157
6.4 Methodology and Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
6.5 Interests, Diversity and Universalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
6.6 Individual Interests, Particular and
General Common Good .......................... 166
6.7 Bargaining, Morality and Power .................... 169
Chapter 7. Survival, Happiness, Ethics .................. 172
7.1 The Point of Departure: Survival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
7.2 Five Obvious Truths ............................ 174
7.3 Some Classical Thoughts about Happiness ............. 179
7.4 Science and Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
7.5 Ethical Capacity and Happiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
7.6 Freedom, Equality and Justification .................. 191
Notes . .......................................... 196
Chapter 1 ........................................ 196
Chapter 2 ........................................ 199
Chapter 3 ........................................ 200
Chapter 4 ........................................ 201
Chapter 5 ........................................ 218
Chapter 6 ........................................ 219
Chapter 7 ........................................ 221
Bibliography ..................................... 225
Index . .......................................... 237
PREFACE
Sometimes a person has an idea (or a bunch of ideas) and writes an
article or several articles with this idea in mind. That is, the articles (or
books) he writes will have an argument (or group of arguments)
underlying the work. In that case, he consciously has a leitmotiv as a
continuous reference through his work.
In other cases, he writes an article, several articles or books without
having a clear idea in mind whether there is or not a leitmotiv, an
underlying idea or a bunch of ideas for his work.
Of course, in the first case, he can be more or less faithful to these
recognized underlying ideas because, normally, they have not been clearly
delimited. This can be so because these basic ideas, due to their
vagueness, are very difficult to delimitate with precision. Even the
boundaries have to be conventionally established unless we accept some
kind of essentialization that make them the true ones. Furthermore, he can
feel more confortable within flexible boundaries, but not for the sake of
the comfort of the writer, but because it gives him a better chance for
intellectual fecundity.
In any case, this introduction tries to discover the idea or ideas that
underly the papers of this book. This is not a rare thing. According to
Bruce Ackerman, "liberalism is not a self-concious political theory,
because neither Locke, Mill, Tocqueville, Constant, nor Humboldt wrote
for being liberals".
Of course, I do not try any comparison with these giants. What I want
to say is that a constructive work should be done in order to discover these
ideas, if any, that constitute the underlying justification or leitmotiv of the
different papers. In order to discover this cement or better, this paste, I
will try to clear up what was said in each paper and whether there is or
there is not a common purpose, leitmotiv or some justificatory ideas that
enable us to say, shape, not a system, but a meaningful whole.
Last but not least, I want to express my special debt of gratitude to
Professors Aulis Aarnio, Aleksander Peczenik and Neil MacCormick for
their help and encouragement in getting this work published and in
giving me the possibility to take part in the international discussion. I am
very grateful for the opportunity I have had to give several lectures and
2 PREFACE
seminars at the Universities of Tampere and Lund in 1990, 1992, 1993,
and for the valuable comments and criticisms. Nor shall I forget the
warm atmosphere at the University of Lapplands where I was invited to
give a lecture in the Nordic Congress of Legal and Social Philosophy in
January 1992.
Otherwise, I want to mention the Legal Seminars I have had the
opportunity to organize, sponsored by the Consell Insular of Mallorca,
with different topics such as, "Ethics and Cultural Diversity", "Law and
Morals, today", "Law, Ethics and the Market", "Principles and Rules in
the European Legal Integration", "After the wall: whose liberty, whose
equality?" For these and other seminars and lectures, I want to thank
Professors E. Garzon Valdes, R. Zimmerling, F. Laporta, J. Muguerza,
A. Calsamiglia, R. Alexy, A. Aarnio, A. Peczenik, F. Ovejero, M.
Borrell, C. Paz-Ares, V. Camps, J.C. Bayon, R. Guastini, E. Perez
Lufio, B. Vila, E. Diaz, A. Ruiz Miguel, C. Varga, N. MacCormick, J.
Finnis, R. Summers, M. Atienza, G. Robles, G. Peces Barba, E.
Fernandez, J.R. Capella, G. Carrio, R. Treves, N. Lopez Calera, L.
Garcia San Miguel, etc. They gave me the opportunity to discuss these
and other topics.
I warmly thank language consultant Kirsi Kuuttiniemi for work well
and quickly done.
The University of Balearic Islands contributed economically to the
linguistic correction, for which I express my deepest gratitude.