Spaak on Legal Argumentation and the Nature of Law

Torben Spaak, Stockholm University, Faculty of Law, has published Legal Argumentation and the Nature of Law as Stockholm University Research Paper No. 133. Here is the abstract.

The primary task of judges is to decide cases and give reasons for their decisions, whereas the primary task of doctrinal legal scholars is to provide a thought-out picture of the law of the land, or some part thereof; and in order to perform these tasks judges interpret and apply the law, whereas legal scholars interpret the law without applying it (except in their imagination). However, thinking or theorizing about the nature of law, something legal philosophers tend to find quite interesting, is not something most judges or legal scholars engage in, or even consider interesting. The main reason this is so, I suspect, is that they think that such theorizing has no interesting implications for legal argumentation. But are they right? Could it not be that theories of law have interesting implications for legal argumentation? To answer such a general question would be easier said than done, however. In this chapter, I therefore wish to focus on a more limited question, one that is easier to handle, namely, the question of whether any of four carefully selected contemporary theories of law, namely, Michael Moore's, Joseph Raz's, Robert Alexy's, and Alf Ross's theories, have interesting implications for legal argumentation. While such a limited investigation cannot yield general results, it can tell us whether some theories of law have interesting implications for legal argumentation; and the result, whatever it may be, may suggest, though it will not prove, that the same may be true of other theories of law. Accordingly, having discussed these four theories, I argue (1) that Moore’s and Alexy’s theories of law have interesting implications for the interpretation and application of the law; (2) that Raz’s thesis has interesting implications both for the interpretation and application of the law and for legal argumentation more broadly conceived, namely, for the legitimacy of judicial decision-making; (3) that Ross’s theory, interesting though it is, lacks interesting implications for legal argumentation more broadly conceived and thus for the interpretation and application of the law, too; and (4) that claims (1)-(3) suggest, though they do not prove, that other theories of law, too, may have interesting implications for legal argumentation.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Holtermann, Introduction to Alf Ross: On Law and Justice @JakovoHoHo

Jakob v. H. Holtermann, University of Copenhagen, iCourts, Centre of Excellence for International Courts, has published Alf Ross: On Law and Justice; Editor's Introduction, as iCourts Working Paper Series, No. 116. It is also forthcoming in Alf Ross, On Law and Justice (Jakob v. H. Holtermann, ed., tr. Uta Bindreiter, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

This paper constitutes the editor’s introduction to the new English translation of Alf Ross’s main work On Law and Justice forthcoming on Oxford University Press (2018). On Law and Justice is a classic work of twentieth-century legal philosophy. The original Danish manuscript (Om ret og retfærdighed) was first published in 1953. The first translation into English (1958) was notably poor – significantly abridged and misrepresenting Ross’s views. Translated in full from scratch, this critical edition sheds new light on Ross’s work and resituates it firmly in the context of current debates in the field. In recent years, Alf Ross (1899-1979) has attracted increasing levels of attention. Not only is he, in HLA. Hart’s words, “the most acute and best-equipped philosopher” of Scandinavian legal realism. On Law and Justice reveals why Ross is by prominent scholars considered one of the three or four most important legal philosophers of the past century – and why his relevance is on the rise again. On Law and Justice provides the most convincing take on a consistent legal realist position. Grounded in a moderate version of the logical empiricist philosophical outlook, the mature Alf Ross outlines a purely empirical legal research programme, which simultaneously fully recognizes the distinctly normative character of law. In this way, Ross’s legal realism avoids the standard critiques against behaviorist reductionism while remaining categorically distinct from legal positivism and natural law. This editor’s introduction to the new edition clarifies Ross’s general philosophical project and details his position including Ross’s sophisticated dual distinction between internal and external aspects of law which essentially anticipated and surpassed Hart’s celebrated but more crude analysis. Holtermann connects Ross’s work with the ongoing empirical turn in legal scholarship, and with related attempts to associate legal realism with more broad philosophical trends under the label naturalized jurisprudence. This paper also includes the editor’s “Note on the translation of ‘gyldig’ and ‘gældende ret’ as ‘valid’ and ‘scientifically valid law’”.

Download the introduction from SSRN at the link.