scholarly journals Will the "Legal Singularity" Hollow Out Law's Normative Core?

2021 ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Robert Weber
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Weak Form ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Strong Form ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Government Power ◽  
Legal Subjects

This Article undertakes a critical examination of the unintended consequences for the legal system if we arrive at the futurist dream of a legal singularity—the moment when predictive, mass-data technologies evolve to create a perfectly predictable, algorithmically-expressed legal system bereft of all legal uncertainty. It argues that although the singularity would surely enhance the efficiency of the legal system in a narrow sense, it would also undermine the rule of law, a bedrock institution of any liberal legal order and a key source of the legal system’s legitimacy. It would do so by dissolving the normative content of the two core pillars of the rule of law: the predictability principle and the universality principle, each of which has traditionally been conceived as a bulwark against arbitrary government power. The futurists heralding the legal singularity privilege a weak-form predictability principle that emphasizes providing notice to legal subjects about the content of laws over a strong-form variant that also emphasizes the prevention of arbitrary governmental action. Hence, an inattentive and hurried embrace of predictive technologies in service of the (only weak-form) predictability principle will likely attenuate the rule of law’s connection to the deeper (strong-form) predictability principle. The legal singularity will also destabilize law’s universality principle, by reconceiving of legal subjects as aggregations of data points rather than as individual members of a polity. In so doing, it will undermine the universality principle’s premise that the differences among legal subjects are outweighed by what we—or, better still, “We the People” who are, as Blackstone put it, the “community in general”—have in common. A cautionary directive emerges from this analysis: that lawyers should avoid an uncritical embrace of predictive technologies in pursuit of a shrunken ideal of predictability that might ultimately require them to throw aside much of the normative ballast that has kept the liberal legal order stable and afloat.

Global Legal Pluralism and the Rule of Law

2020 ◽  
pp. 363-382
Author(s):  
David Lefkowitz
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Regulatory Regimes ◽  
Legal Subjects ◽  
The Ideal

A vibrant debate has recently emerged among legal theorists regarding the desirability of legal pluralism: the existence of distinct regulatory regimes that make overlapping claims to authority. While Monists maintain that we should strive to forge a unitary legal order, Normative Legal Pluralists favour an approach that seeks to manage legal plurality without eliminating it. This chapter critically evaluates a common argument Monists level against Normative Legal Pluralism, namely that it conflicts with fidelity to the ideal of the rule of law.Advocates of Normative Legal Pluralism employ three strategies to respond to their rule-of-law critics. First, they attempt to show that a plural legal order fares no worse than a unitary one when measured against the standard of providing legal subjects with certainty and predictability. Second, they argue that increases in tolerance, or respect for the exercise of communal and individual autonomy, warrant whatever diminution in the rule of law Normative Legal Pluralism produces. Finally, they invoke an account of law’s distinctive normativity informed by sociolegal jurisprudence and constructivist political theory to disarm rule of law objections to normative legal pluralism, either by contesting the premises on which they rest or by providing reasons to conclude that the critics’ worries are seriously overdrawn. While the first two strategies fail, the critics underestimate or simply fail to notice Normative Legal Pluralists’ ability to leverage their conception of law’s legitimacy to address rule of law concerns.

Legality Without The Rule of Law? Scott Shapiro on Wicked Legal Systems

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-200
Author(s):  
David Dyzenhaus
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Moral Quality ◽  
Legal Positivist

InLegality,Scott Shapiro – a leading legal positivist – analyses the problem of a wicked legal system in a way that brings him close to natural law positions. For he argues that a wicked legal system is botched as a legal system and I show that such an argument entails a prior argument that there is some set of standards or criteria internal to law which are both moral and legal. As a result, the more successful a legal order is legally speaking, the better the moral quality of its law, and the more it is a failure morally speaking, the worse the legal quality of its law. It is such moral features of law that Shapiro concedes make it plausible to account for law’s claim to justified authority over its subjects. However, Shapiro cannot, as a legal positivist, accept this entailment. His book thus brings to the surface and illuminates a central dilemma for legal positivism. If legal positivists wish to account for the authority of law they have to abandon legal positivism’s denial that law has such moral features. If they do not, they should revive a form of legal positivism that specifically abjures any claim to account for law’s normative nature.

scholarly journals К вопросу о понятии и сущности правового государства

2021 ◽  
Vol 70 (6) ◽  
pp. 64-67
Author(s):  
И.И. Ларинбаева ◽  
А.Р. Насыров ◽  
Р.А. Иксанов
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
General Principles Of Law ◽  
International Legal System

The article examines the issues of the formation of the rule of law, the influence of general principles of law on this process, as well as the importance of constitutionalism on the development of the concept of the rule of law. It is noted that the model of the rule of law is embedded in the construction of the international legal system. The conclusion is substantiated that the essence of the rule of law is reduced to strengthening the systemic elements and the consistency of constitutional processes and international legal order.

scholarly journals HEALTH EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT. A LEGAL ANALYSIS OF THE ITALIAN EXPERIENCE

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-146
Author(s):  
Vicenzo Baldini
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
The State ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Landing Point ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Italian Experience ◽  
The One

The state of emergency that is being experienced has generated a sort of dynamic disorder of complex systematic re-elaboration within the framework of the legal system of the state. We appreciate a permanent tension between the rule of law and the discipline of emergency which manages to find a problematic landing point in the prefiguration of the existence of an emergency legal system, based on a different Grundnorm and parallel to the one that sustains the whole establishment of the legal system of the sources of the state legal order

Access to, and Provision of, Legal Information in the Transition from Communism to Democracy in Estonia

2006 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-119
Author(s):  
Julia Laffranque
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Legal Information ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Penal Law ◽  
The Republic

The Estonian legal system has over the last decade and a half undergone a tremendous change. Quite often we have had to start from almost nothing and to develop our law very fast compared to societies with long lasting traditions of stable and well established democracy where similar reforms have taken hundreds of years instead of ten. The years that have passed since the reestablishment of Estonia's independence are characterised by reforms of the legal system, preparation for them, and finally their implementation. All these activities have stemmed from a single underlying idea - to develop a legal order appropriate to a democratic state based on the rule of law. Reforms in public and private law as well as in penal law were finalised ten years after the entry into force of the Constitution of the Republic of Estonia in 1992.

Rule of law and the scope of interpretation of legislative provisions in the process of judicial and administrative review. Remarks against the background of the phenomenon of „lawmaking” of administrative courts

2021 ◽  
Vol 2(24) ◽  
pp. 373-387
Author(s):  
Przemysław Wilczyński
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Basic Criterion ◽  
Administrative Review ◽  
Administrative Courts ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Insight Into

The rule of law, as stipulated in article 7 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, is one of the fundamental principles shaping the functioning of public administration in the Republic of Poland. Legality of the functioning of public administration is also accepted as the basic criterion of judicial and administrative review of the actions taken by the administration. However, judgments of administrative courts often go outside the boundaries of findings that could be made based on linguistic interpretation of legislative provisions, by referring to the rules of the legal system, including in cases where no doubts exist with regards to the interpretation of provisions. The aim of this paper is to offer insight into the basis and nature of doubts encountered with regards to the admissibility of the use of non-linguistic interpretation by administrative courts where the use of such interpretation does not appear to be required.

scholarly journals In the Absence of the Rule of Law: Everyday Lawyering, Dignity and Resistance in Myanmar’s ‘Disciplined Democracy’

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 573-599
Author(s):  
Alex Batesmith ◽  
Jake Stevens
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
State Power ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Material Support ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Alternative Perspective ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Human

This article explores how ‘everyday’ lawyers undertaking routine criminal defence cases navigate an authoritarian legal system. Based on original fieldwork in the ‘disciplined democracy’ of Myanmar, the article examines how hegemonic state power and a functional absence of the rule of law have created a culture of passivity among ordinary practitioners. ‘Everyday’ lawyers are nevertheless able to uphold their clients’ dignity by practical and material support for the individual human experience – and in so doing, subtly resist, evade or disrupt state power. The article draws upon the literature on the sociology of lawyering and resistance, arguing for a multilayered understanding of dignity going beyond lawyers’ contributions to their clients’ legal autonomy. Focusing on dignity provides an alternative perspective to the otherwise often all-consuming rule of law discourse. In authoritarian legal systems, enhancing their clients’ dignity beyond legal autonomy may be the only meaningful contribution that ‘everyday’ lawyers can make.

scholarly journals Developing an Index of the Rule of Law: Sharing the Experience of Hong Kong

2007 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benny Y.T. Tai
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Downward Trend ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Major Aspect ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative

AbstractThe Rule of Law is considered a major aspect of modern governance. For every legal system, it is important whether the Rule of Law is attained and how far it has been attained. Though there are various indicators and indexes of the Rule of Law they all have their limitations. This paper reported a study conducted in Hong Kong in 2005, combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies, to assess the level of attainment of the Rule of Law in Hong Kong. It is found that the level of attainment is high but a downward trend is also discovered. A main objective of developing this new methodology in assessing Rule of Law, is that it could be used for tracking the development of the Rule of Law in a particular legal system and facilitating comparison between legal systems.

An International Rule of Law

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Rule Based ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Globalizing World ◽  
International Legal System ◽  
Elusive Concept ◽  
International Rule ◽  
Selection Of

The “international rule of law” is an elusive concept. Under this heading, mainly two variations are being discussed: The international rule of law “proper” and an “internationalized” or even “globalized” rule of law. The first usage relates to the rule of law as applied to the international legal system, that is the application of the rule of law to those legal relations and contexts that are governed by international law. In this context, the term international rule of law is often mentioned as a catchphrase which merely embellishes a discussion of international law tout court. The international rule of law is here mainly or exclusively used as shorthand for compliance with international law, a synonym for a “rule based international order,” or a signifier for the question whether international law is “real” law. This extremely loose usage of the term testifies its normative and symbolic appeal although it does not convey any additional analytic value. The second usage of the rule of law in international contexts covers all other aspects of the rule of law in a globalizing world, notably rule of law promotion in its widest sense. The increasing interaction between national and international law and between the diverse domestic legal orders (through law diffusion and reception, often again mediated by international law) is a manifestation of the second form of the rule of law. The structure of this bibliography roughly follows this bifurcation of the Rule of Law Applied to the International Legal System and the Rule of Law in a Globalizing World. Next to these two main parts, three further, separate sections discuss questions that arise at the intersection of the two variants or are of crosscutting importance to the rule of law as a whole. This includes sections on the Rule of Law as a UN Project: A Selection of UN Documents on the Rule of Law, the Interaction between the International and Domestic Rule(s) of Law, and the (International) Rule of Law: A Tool of Hegemony?.

Is Rule of Law an Equilibrium Without (Some) Private Enforcement?

Privatization ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 246-275
Author(s):  
Gillian K. Hadfield ◽  
Barry R. Weingast
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Private Enforcement ◽  
Voluntary Participation ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Social Sanctions ◽  
Enforcement Authority ◽  
Social Orders

This chapter argue against the presumptive priority of government even in the domain of law: in recent work, the authors have developed a framework for analyzing law in which they suggest that the main distinction between legal and other social orders is the presence of an entity capable of changing rules. But an equilibrium in which these rules generate compliance does not require a centralized enforcement authority; indeed, the authors argue that fully centralized enforcement is in fact incapable of sustaining an equilibrium characterized by rule of law. Rather, the need to coordinate and incentivize voluntary participation under decentralized enforcement yields the normatively attractive legal attributes associated with the rule of law, and the authors draw on classical Athens to illustrate this model. On their account, private enforcement – in the sense of social sanctions and exclusion, limited use of force, and cooperation with authorized enforcers – are essential for a legal system to achieve the rule of law..

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