Natural Law and Practical Rationality

Natural Law and Practical Rationality
Author: Mark C. Murphy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2001-06-11
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780521802291

A defense of a contemporary natural law theory of practical rationality.

Between Authority and Interpretation

Between Authority and Interpretation
Author: Joseph Raz
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2009-02-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191580341

In this book Joseph Raz develops his views on some of the central questions in practical philosophy: legal, political, and moral. The book provides an overview of Raz's work on jurisprudence and the nature of law in the context of broader questions in the philosophy of practical reason. The book opens with a discussion of methodological issues, focusing on understanding the nature of jurisprudence. It asks how the nature of law can be explained, and how the success of a legal theory can be established. The book then addresses central questions on the nature of law, its relation to morality, the nature and justification of authority, and the nature of legal reasoning. It explains how legitimate law, while being a branch of applied morality, is also a relatively autonomous system, which has the potential to bridge moral differences among its subjects. Raz offers responses to some critical reactions to his theory of authority, adumbrating, and modifying the theory to meet some of them. The final part of the book brings together for the first time Raz's work on the nature of interpretation in law and the humanities. It includes a new essay explaining interpretive pluralism and the possibility of interpretive innovation. Taken together, the essays in the volume offer a valuable introduction for students coming for the first time to Raz's work in the philosophy of law, and an original contribution to many of the current debates in practical philosophy.

Practical Aspects of WTO Litigation

Practical Aspects of WTO Litigation
Author: Marco Tulio Molina Tejeda
Publisher: Kluwer Law International B.V.
Total Pages: 680
Release: 2020-07-08
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9041185976

Global Trade Law Series Volume-54 The World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) entered into force in 1995. Since then, it has spawned an extensive body of jurisprudence, making it a highly complex system to navigate. This book provides the first in-depth practical guide to resolving a dispute at the WTO, edited by an international lawyer, who has on-hands experience in WTO litigation. Contributors of individual chapters include government officials responsible for WTO dispute settlement from developing and developed countries, WTO Secretariat officials, a former member of the Appellate Body, academics specializing in international trade and related fields, and lawyers from major law firms specializing in WTO law. Contributors explain, in a detailed manner, the numerous procedural steps and practices developed over the past twenty-five years, on: preparing for WTO litigation; recognizing the importance of WTO consultations; presenting a case before a panel; panel requests and panels’ terms of reference; the role and assistance of the WTO Secretariat; the panel process; rules of evidence; confidentiality and transparency; additional working procedures for the treatment of confidential information; legal remedies to redeem a violation; general considerations for appeal; determining the reasonable period of time for compliance; retaliation proceedings; and use of non-WTO international law. Each contributor identifies the best practices and some of them also suggest potential areas for improvement of the dispute settlement mechanism from their respective points of view. Lawyers and advisors working on WTO law and stakeholders from the private sector, civil society and academia, interested in WTO litigation, will find in one source a deeply informed description of existing dispute resolution practices (some of them previously undocumented) including the most recent jurisprudence clarifying the scope of many procedural rules. With its real-life account of WTO dispute settlement procedures and its key insights and advice from WTO insiders, this book constitutes an expert assessment of a cornerstone of the rules-based multilateral trading system and will prove of enormous value to all stakeholders in international trade.

Legal Directives and Practical Reasons

Legal Directives and Practical Reasons
Author: Noam Gur
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2018
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199659877

This book investigates law's interaction with practical reasons. What difference can legal requirements-e.g. traffic rules, tax laws, or work safety regulations-make to normative reasons relevant to our action? Do they give reasons for action that should be weighed among all other reasons? Or can they, instead, exclude and take the place of some other reasons? The book critically examines some of the existing answers and puts forward an alternative understanding of law's interaction with practical reasons. At the outset, two competing positions are pitted against each other: Joseph Raz's view that (legitimate) legal authorities have pre-emptive force, namely that they give reasons for action that exclude some other reasons; and an antithesis, according to which law-making institutions (even those that meet prerequisites of legitimacy) can at most provide us with reasons that compete in weight with opposing reasons for action. These two positions are examined from several perspectives, such as justified disobedience cases, law's conduct-guiding function in contexts of bounded rationality, and the phenomenology associated with authority. It is found that, although each of the above positions offers insight into the conundrum at hand, both suffer from significant flaws. These observations form the basis on which an alternative position is put forward and defended. According to this position, the existence of a reasonably just and well-functioning legal system constitutes a reason that fits neither into a model of ordinary reasons for action nor into a pre-emptive paradigm-it constitutes a reason to adopt an (overridable) disposition that inclines its possessor towards compliance with the system's requirements.

The Nature and Value of Vagueness in the Law

The Nature and Value of Vagueness in the Law
Author: Hrafn Asgeirsson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2020-04-10
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1509904441

Lawmaking is – paradigmatically – a type of speech act: people make law by saying things. It is natural to think, therefore, that the content of the law is determined by what lawmakers communicate. However, what they communicate is sometimes vague and, even when it is clear, the content itself is sometimes vague. This monograph examines the nature and consequences of these two linguistic sources of indeterminacy in the law. The aim is to give plausible answers to three related questions: In virtue of what is the law vague? What might be good about vague law? How should courts resolve cases of vagueness? It argues that vagueness in the law is sometimes a good thing, although its value should not be overestimated. It also proposes a strategy for resolving borderline cases, arguing that textualism and intentionalism – two leading theories of legal interpretation – often complement rather than compete with each other.

THE PRACTICE OF JUSTICE

THE PRACTICE OF JUSTICE
Author: William H. Simon
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2000
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780674002753

William Simon, a legal theorist with experience in practice, here argues that the profession's standard approach to questions of legal ethics is incoherent and implausible, insisting the critical weakness is the style of judgment.