Law as an Artifact

In this volume leading scholars from both the continental and analytic schools examine how their respective theoretical positions relate to the artifactual nature of law. It offers a complete analysis of what the claim that law—and its units: legal systems, legal norms, and particular legal institutions—is an artifact, in fact, ontologically entails and what consequences, if any, this claim has for philosophical accounts of law. Examining the artifactual nature of law draws attention to the role that intention, function, and action play in the ontological structure of law, and how these attributes interact with rules. It puts the role of author and authorship at the center of its analysis of legal ontology, and widens the scope that functional analysis can legitimately have in legal theory, emphasizing how the content of law depends on how it is used. Furthermore, the appeal to artifacts brings to the fore questions about the significance of concepts for the existence of law, and makes available new tools for legal interpretation. The notion of artifactuality offers a starting point from which to approach the basic dilemma of whether it is meaningful to search for essential, necessary, and sufficient features of law, a question that in current legal theory is put when deciding what kind of enterprise legal theory is from a methodological point of view, namely whether it is descriptive or prescriptive. This volume unearths insights and observations of value to all those looking to deepen their understanding of how the law is understood and experienced.

2018 ◽  
Vol 150 ◽  
pp. 05056
Author(s):  
Abdulrahman M.A.Albelahi ◽  
A. Ali ◽  
Faten Mohmed ◽  
Metwally Ali

Since the beginning, legal theory has concerned itself with the establishment of principles and precepts that govern the procedure of legal interpretation, from the initial stages of the judicial reasoning down to the promulgation of ruling and their implementation, Islam is a total way of life. Muslims are obliged to abide by the rules of Allah in every aspect of their lives, always and wherever they live. However, the actual rules of Allah as given in the Qur’an and the sunna are limited. The Qur’an contains only six hundred verses directly related to laws, and there are approximately two thousand hadiths. The function of interpretation is to discover the intention of the Lawmaker of the matter, therefore, interpretat primarily concerned with the discovery of that which is rot self-evident the objective of interpretation is to ascertain the intention c the Lawmaker with regard to what has been left unexpressed as a matter of necessary interference from the surrounding circumstances. Sometimes, the textual sources did not provide detailed guidelines in which to derive the law, and then the role of interpretation is important to determine the law. In Islamic law the role of Ijtihad undoubtedly important in order to meet new problems. But some of the Jurist contended that the role of Ijtihad had ended and we have to follow the rule that has been stated. An explanation given to this trend is that a point had been reached at which all essential question of law had been thoroughly discussed and further deliberation was deemed unnecessary. In Common law, man-made law and legislation are related to one another within a philosophy of law. Parliament makes law and it is the duty of the courts to give effect to them if properly enacted. While courts may rule that a particular statute or section is invalid for various reasons such as unconstitutionality, they cannot say, "We shall change this Act because it is not appropriate". That function belongs to Parliament (Wu Min Aun 1990: 120). So as in Islamic law, the Lawmaker is Allah S.w.t and the sacred text (Quran) is legislated due to His intention whereas Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad is enacted due to the Prophet's intention. Therefore, Ulama of Usul Fiqh, in making any Ijtihad, they are du y bound to be guided by Quran and Sunnah.


2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 515-538
Author(s):  
Severin Meier

Social Darwinism as a utopian project had a decisive influence on the interpretation of the ius ad bellum before World War I. This contribution tries, among others, to draw parallels to the way today’s utopian visions of democracy and the rule of law affect international law. Approaches to legal interpretation influenced by critical legal theory are used to explain how such extra-legal considerations can play a role in the interpretation of international legal norms. Such approaches maintain that international law cannot be objective, i.e. simultaneously based on State consent and on extra-consensual standards. The article further asks how international law should be understood if it cannot be objective. In other words, it discusses the practical consequences if international law has to rely on extra-legal considerations, such as the belief in Social Darwinism or the desire to spread democracy, in order to reach solutions to legal problems. It is argued that upholding the belief in international law’s objectivity is preferable to its alternatives.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (XX) ◽  
pp. 263-276
Author(s):  
Łucja Kobroń-Gąsiorowska

In this article, from a multidisciplinary point of view, key questions were raised that defined how the bloc of communist countries had an impact on the International Labor Organization. The author believes that the role of communist countries in the ILO depended not only on the international political, economic and social context of the time, but also on the field of globalized labor history and relations of international organizations. The starting point of this article is the central hypothesis that the concept of protecting employees and the rights of employers has always been presented from the point of view of the „bloc” of capitalist states, without reference to the role of communist states.


Author(s):  
Umberto Lucia ◽  
Giulia Grisolia

From a thermodynamic point of view, living cell life is no more than a cyclic process. It starts with the newly separated daughter cells and restarts when the next generations grow as free entities. In this cycle the cell changes its entropy. In cancer the growth control is damaged. In this paper we analyze the role of the volume-area ratio in cell in relation to the heat exchange between cell and its environment in order to point out the effect on the cancer growth. The result holds to a possible control of the cancer growth based on the heat exchanged by the cancer towards its environment, and the membrane potential variation, with the consequence of controlling the ions fluxes and the related biochemical reactions. This second law approach could represent a starting point for a possible future support for the anticancer therapies, in order to improve their effectiveness for the untreatable cancers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (39) ◽  
pp. 86-93
Author(s):  
Olga V. Klimashevskaya ◽  
Pavel E. Studnikov ◽  
Pavel V. Poznyakov

This article is devoted to the analysis of Russian legislation from the point of observance of gender symmetry and the identification of norms that infringe on the rights of one of the genders and thereby hinder the exercise of rights on equal footing. The starting point in the research methodology is the study of the concept of a gender-neutral norm, which should proceed from the position of ensuring equality of conditions and opportunities for men and women to the same extent. Also, a gender analysis of Russian legislation was used as a methodology, as a result of which it can be concluded that the Russian state, as an institution to which society has delegated power, is not fully consistent in the political measures and steps taken to resolve this issue. The final conclusion that was reached during the study, in a number of cases, seems advisable to revise the provisions of Russian legislation beforehand with sociological research, which makes it possible to reveal the real effectiveness and possible side negative consequences of the application of certain legal norms and thereby minimize the procedural problems that arise in this regard.


Author(s):  
Sudirman Sudirman

Emotions are human things. When people consider emotions from a strategic leadership point of view, additional individual framing factors become unavoidable and play a role in an organization's management process. This research aimed to evaluate the existing literature on emotion and strategic leadership comprehensively. The study was a survey of the literature on emotion and strategic leadership. Because of the search and exclusion criteria applied, only 24 articles were relevant. The texts were studied using the grounded theory method to build a new theoretical model and identify essential characteristics of organizational emotion shifting. The model tried to demonstrate how the interaction of human and organizational elements and the task and problems faced by strategic leaders result in internal and external emotional shifts. This literature survey and theoretical integration provided a starting point for further research. The results show that the conceptualization of emotions in strategic leadership encompasses all five levels: positive emotions, negative emotions, emotional empowerment (internal emotion shaping), the establishment of external resources, and the use of power (external emotions shaping). The research revealed that emotion in organizational shaping was a key variable. This variable identified the numerous ways strategic leaders use emotion to shape organizations. It indicates that the concept can bring the person (strategic leader) and organizational levels together. In light of the limited literature, mainly focusing on strategic and emotional leadership, the model should be tested as a foundation for future research.


1995 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 347-355
Author(s):  
Keith C. Culver

In his recently published book Norm and Nature, Roger Shiner contends that legal positivists cannot account adequately for the internal point of view which characterizes legal agents’ attitude of commitment to legal norms. Shiner expects that an adequate legal theory will “reproduce the way in which law functions in the lives of those who have the internal point of view to law” (NN, 137). He calls this the “reproduction demand.” In his analysis of Joseph Raz he claims that such “sophisticated positivists” cannot maintain a theory of legal statements which are “detached” from moral commitment to the legal norms they refer to. The failure of the theory of detached legal statements leaves positivists without an adequate account of the necessarily personal aspect of the internal point of view in legal systems—a point of view which according to Shiner requires normative commitment to the justification of the legal norm.


Author(s):  
Scott Soames

This chapter is concerned with the content of legal norms governing the interpretation of legal texts by legally authoritative actors in a legal system. As such, a theory of legal interpretation is a theory of the content of the law, codified or uncodified, governing legally authorized interpreters. Thought of in this way, it is a nonnormative empirical theory related to, but distinct from, (a) empirical theories about what the mass of judges in a particular legal system actually do in the cases before them; (b) moral theories about what they morally should do in particular cases; and (c) politically normative theories about what the role of the judiciary should be in an ideal system. The most important question to be answered by such a theory is, what precisely is required of legally authoritative interpreters, how much and what kind of latitude are they allowed, and what factors are they to take into account in their interpretations?


Blood ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 113 (9) ◽  
pp. 2038-2046 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Bukrinsky ◽  
Kevin J. P. Griffin ◽  
Yan Zhao ◽  
Shuo Lin ◽  
Utpal Banerjee

The ETS protein Spi-1/Pu.1 plays a pivotal and widespread role throughout hematopoiesis in many species. This study describes the identification, characterization, and functional analysis of a new zebrafish spi transcription factor spi-1–like (spi-1l) that is expressed in primitive myeloid cells, erythro-myelo progenitor cells, and in the adult kidney. Spi-1l functions genetically downstream of etsrp, scl, and spi-1/pu.1 in myeloid differentiation. Spi-1l is coexpressed in a subset of spi-1/pu.1 cells and its function is necessary and sufficient for macrophage and granulocyte differentiation. These results establish a critical role for spi-1l in zebrafish myeloid cell differentiation.


2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 405-428
Author(s):  
Hermione Spriggs

How might a singular object, a herdsman’s lasso known as the ‘ uurga’, facilitate a fresh understanding of cosmology and human–animal relationships in nomadic Mongolia? ‘ Uurga shig’ re-evaluates the performance of an object as an agentive social participant and the role of drawing as an anthropologically relevant method, outlining the need for interdisciplinary exchange between the fields of participatory art and anthropology. With a starting point of Alfred Gell’s thesis of ‘Traps as artworks and artworks as traps’ (1996), the lasso presents an alternative point of view to the western ‘zoological framing’ criticized by Massumi (‘What animals teach us about politics’, 2014). Instead the uurga functions as a non-Euclidean drawing tool, a frame through which to better understand the fluid relationships underpinning human–animal codependency on the Mongolian steppe. From the line on a page to the ‘drawing through’ of a thread in a needle and the ‘drawing in’ of a wild horse in nomadic Mongolia, the author explores the application of drawing as an intimate method for analyzing moving relationships. With a focus on the drawn line as a connecting device that lends itself to figure–ground reversal, she extends the application of drawing as a prosthetic technology, one that might be used to catalyze a perspectival shift into the worlds of other animals.


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