Constitutionalism and legal reasoning

Constitutionalism and Legal Reasoning

Volumn 79, Issue , 2007, Pages 1-189

  Torre, Massimo La ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY MAGNA GRAECIA OF CATANZARO   (Italy)

^b UNIVERSITY OF HULL   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84891393915     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4020-5595-9     Document Type: Book

References (69)

1. J. Gardner, «Legal Positivism: 5 1/2 Myths», in The American Journal of Jurisprudence, Vol. 46, 2001, p. 202.
2. See for instance A. Marmor, Interpretation and Legal Theory, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1992, p. 153.
3. This is the main point made by Hart's Postscript attached to the second edition of The Concept of Law (Clarendon, Oxford 1994).
4. See for instance W. J.Waluchow, «Charter Challenges: A Test Case for Theories of Law», in Osgoode Hall Law Journal, Vol. 29, 1991, pp. 183 ff.
5. J. Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1980, p. 250.
6. Cf. for instance J. F. Fries, Philosophische Rechtslehre (1803), now in Id., Sämtliche Schriften, Vol. 9.
7. G. König and L. Geldsetzer, Scientia Verlag, Aalen 1971, p. 105: Before the law it is indifferent who is the regulator, whether one or hundred, provided the law is in force thanks to him [Vor Recht ist es gleich, wer der Regent sey, ob einer oder hunderte, genug, wenn durch ihn das Gesetz gilt].
8. J. Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, p. 252.
9. Ibid., p. 15, and cf. D. Beyleveld and R. Brownsword, «The Implications of Natural-Law Theory for the Sociology of Law», in Post-Modern Law-Enlightenment, Revolution and the Death of Man, ed. by A. Carthy, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1990, p. 144, where we find a parallel claim.
10. «Es gibt Idealtypen von Bordellen so gut wie von Religionen» (M.Weber, «Die "Objektivität" sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis», now in Id., Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftlehre, ed. by J. Winckelmann, Mohr, Tübingen 1988, p. 200).
11. J. Finnis, «Law and What I Truly Should Decide», in The American Journal of Jurisprudence, Vol. 48, 2003, p. 108.
12. J. Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, p. 15. Italics in the text.
13. J. Finnis, «Natural Law and Ethics of Discourse», in Ratio Juris, Vol. 12, 1999, p. 364.
14. «There is no important distinction in essential moral worthlessneess betweeen solitary masturbation, being sodomized as a prostitute, and being sodomized for the pleasure of it. Sexual acts cannot in reality be self-giving unless they are acts by which a man and a woman actualize and experience sexually the real giving of themselves to each other-in biological, affective and volitional union in mutual commitment, both open-ended and exclusive-which like Plato and Aristotle and most people we call marriage»(J. Finnis, «Law, Morality, and Sexual Orientation», in Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy, Vol. 9, 1995, pp. 29-30. Italics in the text).
15. «The choice to kill someone as capital punishment can perhaps be made justifiably, because the action chosen immediately and in itself instantiates the good of justice and so the death of the one punished is not being used as a means to an ulterior end»(J. Finnis, J. Boyle, and G. Grisez, Nuclear Deterrence, Morality and Realism, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1989, p. 317). See also J. Finnis, Moral Absolutes. Tradition, Revision, and Truth, The Catholic University of America Press, Washington D. C. 1991, p. 80: «It seems possible to hold that, just insofar as the action chosen immediately and of itself instantiates the good of retributive justice, the death of the one punished is not being chosen either as an end in itself or as a means to an ulterior end».
16. See, for instance, G. Grisez, J. Boyle, J. Finnis, and W. E. May, «"Every Marital Act Ought to Be Open to New Life": Toward a Clearer Understanding», in The Thomist, Vol. 52, 1988, pp. 365 ff.
17. Cf. J. Finnis, «Law and What I Truly Should Decide», p. 121, and p. 125.
18. J. Finnis, «The Truth in Legal Positivism», in The Autonomy of Law. Essays on Legal Positivism, ed. by R. P. George, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1996, p. 205.
19. R. P. George, The Clash of Orthodoxies. Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis, ISI Books, Delaware 2001, p. 198.
20. See J. Finnis, «The Priority of Persons», in Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence, 4th Series, ed. by J. Horder, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002, pp. 12-13.
21. J. Finnis, «On Reason and Autority in Law's Empire», in Law and Philosophy, Vol. 6, 1987, p. 344. Italics mine.
22. See J. Finnis, «Natural Law and Legal Reasoning», in Natural Law Theory. Contemporary Essays, ed. by R. P. George, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1994, pp. 134 ff.
23. J. Finnis, «Law and What I Truly Should Decide», p. 114.
24. For an interesting comment on such point, cf. H. Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly, Penguin, London 1986, p. 619.
25. J. Finnis, «Abortion, Natural Law, and Public Reason», in Natural Law and Public Reason, ed. by R. P. George and Ch. Wolfe, Georgetown University, Washington, D. C. 2000, p. 79.
26. Ibid., p. 90.
27. Ibid., p. 84.
28. W. Hazlitt, «On Reason and Imagination», in Id., On the Pleasure of Hating, penguin, London 2004, p. 88. Italics in the text.
29. A. Gewirth, Reason and Morality, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1978, p. 175.
30. H. Palmer Olsen and S. Toddington, Law in Its Own Right, Hart, Oxford 1999, pp. 153-154.
31. See A. Gewirth, «Foreword», in D. Beyleveld, The Dialectical Necessity of Morality, the University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1991, pp. viii-ix.
32. Cf. N. MacCormick, «Gewirth's Fallacy», in Queen's Law Journal, Vol. 9, 1984, pp. 345 ff. A similar point is made by R. M. Hare, «Do Agents Have to Be Moralists?»
33. Gewirth's Ethical Rationalism. Critical Essays with a Reply by Alan Gewirth, ed. by E. Regis Jr., the University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1984, pp. 52 ff.
34. Indeed-we may remember Sieyès'words-reason does not love mistery; it works only through expansion. Reason is eminently public: «La raison, d'ailleurs, n'aime point le mistère; elle n'agit que par une grande expansion; ce n'est qu'en frappant partout, qu'elle frappe juste»(E. Sieyès, Qu'est-ce que le Tiers Etat?, Presses universitaires de France, Paris 1982, p. 92).
35. See J. Finnis, « Natural Law and Natural Reasoning», pp. 139-140.
36. D. Beyleveld and R. Brownsword, Law as Moral Judgment, 2nd ed., Sheffield University Press, Sheffield 1994, p. 403.
37. Ibid., p. 440; italics in the text.
38. Ibid., p. 290.
39. Ibid., p. 162.
40. J. Finnis, «Law and What I Truly Should Decide», p. 126.
41. J. Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, p. 16.
42. J. Finnis, «Law and What I Truly Should Decide», p. 128.
43. D. Beyleveld and R. Brownsword, Law as Moral Judgment, 2nd ed., p. 170.
44. See for instance R. P. George, In Defence of Natural Law, p. 139: «marriage, considered not as a mere legal convention, but, rather, as a two-in-flesh communión of persons that is consummated and actualized by sexual acts of the reproductive type, is an intrinsic (or, in our parlance, 'basic') human good».
45. Ibid., p. 179.
46. See H. Palmer Olsen and S. Toddington, Law in Its Own Right, p. 158.
47. Beyleveld and Brownsword, Law as Moral Judgment, p. 161; italics mine.
48. J. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, trans. by W. Rehg, Polity Press, London 1998, p. 14.
49. R. Alexy, The Argument From Injustice. A Reply to Legal Positivism, trans. by S. L. Paulson and B. Litschewski Paulson, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002, p. 79.
50. J. N. Adams and R. Brownsword, Understanding Law, 2nd ed., Sweet & Maxwell, London 1999, p. 19.
51. See J. Habermas, Facts and Norms, Chapter 3.
52. «Die Rechtsform als solche ist diskurstheoretisch unableitbar [The legal form as such is undeducible through a discourse theory approach]»(K. Günther, «Diskurstheorie des Rechts oder liberales Naturrecht in diskurstheoretischem Gewande?», in Kritische Justiz, Vol. 27, 1994, p. 478).
53. See K. Günther, ibid.
54. H. L. A. Hart, Essays in Jurisprudence and Legal Philosophy, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1983, pp. 11-12.
55. «The moral criticism of law, he [Hart] thought, requires a clear and morally neutral way of identifying what the law is that carries no presumption of moral authority»( Th. Nagel, «The Central Questions», in London Review of Books, 3 February 2005, p. 13).
56. D. Beyleveld and R. Brownsword, Law as Moral Judgment, 2nd ed., p. 312.
57. See ibid., p. 311.
58. Cf., for some inclination in this direction, R. P. George and Ch. Wolfe, «Natural Law and Public Reason», in Natural Law and Public Reason, ed. by R. P. George and Ch.Wolfe, p. 56: «Not all persons are equally competent to deliberate carefully when it comes to the most difficult matters. Some matters, as Aquinas suggested, are evident (or, indeed, self-evident) "only to the wise"».
59. This seems to be Leo Strauss' position. See, for instance, his Liberalism Ancient and Modern, Basic Books, New York 1968, Chapter Two, or his What Is Political Philosophy and Other Studies, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1988, pp. 221-222, and cf. A. Bloom, The Closing of American Mind, Simon and Schuster, New York 1987, p. 279: «So philosophers engaged in a gentle art of deception [...] Therefore philosophers allied themselves with the gentlemen, making themselves useful to them, never quite revealing themselves to them, strenghtening their gentleness and openness by reforming their education».
60. Cf. R. P. George, The Clash of Orthodoxies, p. 198.
61. See H. Arendt, Was ist Politik?, ed. by U. Ludz, Piper, München 1993, pp. 9 ff.
62. See ibid., pp. 20 ff.
63. J. Raz, Ethics in the Public Domain, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1994, p. 341.
64. Ibid., p. 209.
65. Put in Thomas Nagel's words, «the process of judicial deliberation may include moral reasoning; the process of discovering what the law is does not»(Th. Nagel, «Raz on Liberty and Law», in Id., Concealement and Exposure and Other Essays, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002, p. 139).
66. This is the view held by another "exclusive" positivist, John Gardner, in his «The Legality of Law», in Ratio Juris, Vol. 17, 2004, p. 178.
67. J. Raz, Ethics in the Public Domain, p. 203.
68. This difficulty was pointed out by Raz himself in one of his previous works: see his Practical Reason and Norms, 2nd ed., Princeton University Press, Princeton,N. J. 1990, pp. 125-126.
69. Cf. J. Gardner, «The Legality of Law», p. 178: «Legal arguments [...] often need moral premisses whether or not the legal norms themselves authorise such a resort to moral premises».