This paper explores the possibility of a standard legal language (e.g. English) for a principled evolution of law in line with technological development. In doing so, reference is made to blockchain networks and smart contracts to emphasise the discontinuity with the liberal legal tradition when it comes to decentralisation and binary code language. Methodologically, the argument is built on the underlying relation between law, semiotics and new forms of media adding to natural language; namely: code and symbols. In what follows, (...) I will concentrate on the study of factors that explain why such approach can be fruitful for the future of law and innovation. I have three reasons for selecting this topic. The first is a more pragmatic reason, based on my current research of law as a linguistic phenomenon. Secondly, the topic does also touch the matter on binary code language, rivalrous to legal alphabetic language. Lastly, the study aims at emphasizing the pivotal role of the jurist as an interpreter in a changing society accommodating diverging realms of reality. The study is structured as follows. Firstly, a quick exam of the traits of blockchain networks would provide the contextual link to establish the arguments in support of the need of a standard legal language. Secondly, a comparison between liberal legal institutions and theory of semiotics is set to perceive their functioning and ascertain their limits in the light of todays unprecedented changes. Thirdly, a summary on blockchain networks’ legal features would constitute the thrust behind the idea of a uniform legal language. Methodologically, the argument does also establish some relations with classical laws of physics and philosophy of media. Its aim is to demonstrate how the suggested legal interpretation and semiotic-based approach can contribute to overcome existing stumbling blocks including, but not limited to, the lack of cooperation at the international level as well as the gap in State norms when it comes to innovation. In this sense, the proposed strategies do not intend to replace current advances in the legal thought. In contrast, it seeks to harmonise their results providing a methodical approach that can concur to inform a new technique to address new controversial issues. In practice, the proposed method regarding the adoption of a uniform legal language would lower transactive costs in terms of normative coordination in the matter of international cooperation and in the definition of applicable law among different legal systems. Alternatively, it might contribute to the convergence of legal systems and/or their underlying concepts. Differently put, article’s contribution can be envisaged in fostering juridical consistency with regards to different forms of languages’ coexistence. (shrink)

Can a postmonetary economy – i.e. an economy which lacks money – offer preferable results to those achieved by a system relying on money? This contribution presents a critical view of the current monetary system by shedding light on its costs, discussed in terms of “apparent employment”, “apparent unemployment”, and “diverted motivations”. To this end, a cost-benefit analysis of non-monetary economy, within the theoretical framework of marginalism, is carried out. The conclusion is that a post (non) monetary economy is able (...) to lead to a higher production level and a more fair distribution of wealth, albeit at the expense of a lower efficiency. (shrink)

It is often argued today that a deep and troublesome gap across the Atlantic has been developing and that Europeans and Americans no longer share the same view of the world. On the basis of data gathered in the 2002 Transatlantic Trends Survey, held in the USA and six European countries, this article assesses whether there is indeed such a gap at the mass level. It focuses on three major dimensions of world views: (1) perceptions of threats (2) the sense (...) of affinity with other countries in terms of allies, friends or foes, and (3) attitudes toward the use of force, both in general and in specific circumstances, more particularly the war over Iraq. It concludes that European publics in 2002 looked at the world in a way that is rather similar to that of many ordinary Americans including harbouring deep reservations about the conduct of certain aspects of U.S. foreign policy. Both publics share fundamental worldviews. On Iraq, Europeans and Americans agreed in some respects (such as the necessary role of the UN) but disagreed on other. In many respects at the mass level the differences across the Atlantic are of degree, and not fundamental. They result from disaffection with the present administration rather than with US policies in general. Moreover, the alleged European is a misnomer, which hides the considerable sympathies and warm feelings towards America, and the perceived common interests and values. (shrink)

Infinitely many intermediate propositional logics with the disjunction property are defined, each logic being characterized both in terms of a finite axiomatization and in terms of a Kripke semantics with the finite model property. The completeness theorems are used to prove that any two logics are constructively incompatible. As a consequence, one deduces that there are infinitely many maximal intermediate propositional logics with the disjunction property.

1 I difetti del sistema denaro e il denaro come difetto del sistema Vale la pena di studiare l’ipotesi di un sistema economico capace di svolgere le sue tipiche funzioni in assenza di denaro? È utopistico lo scenario di un mondo che decide di fare a meno del denaro e che compie questa rivoluzione nel giro di decenni e non di millenni? È pensabile che una nuova economia non monetaria sia in grado di offrire tangibili vantaggi rispetto a quella attuale? (...) Sono queste le domande a cui intendiamo r... (shrink)

The main thesis that is discussed in this article is based on the criticism of the prevalent interpretative models of adolescence developed during the twentieth century. Models that today appear inadequate in grasping the socio-cultural and educational transformations that deeply mark the ways of experiencing adolescents born in the second millennium. The effects of the historical and social practices that shape the adolescent experience in the 2000s represent an essential key to understanding the forms that the adolescent system assumes because (...) of social, cultural, economic, historical, and material changes. (shrink)

During the second term of Jefferson’s presidency, with Europe and the world ravaged by the Napoleonic Wars, it became extremely difficult for the young Republic to defend the principle of sovereignty from the threats of France and Britain. In response to attacks on American shipping, in 1807 Congress passed the Embargo Act, an economic measure designed to convince the two belligerents to respect U.S. neutrality by cutting off American shipping to all foreign nations. This controversial decision, firmly opposed by the (...) Federalist Party, received strong support from one of the most fervent Jeffersonians of the time, Gideon Granger (1767-1822). A lawyer from Connecticut, Granger wrote An Address to the People of New England (1808) under the pseudonym of Algernon Sidney, where he reintroduced into public debate some of Sidney’s archetypal themes, emphasizing the natural right to oppose abusive power and the vital necessity to preserve republican virtues in order to drive away moral and political corruption. (shrink)

The essay starts from various recent magisterial statements - specially Fides et Ratio - which underline in particular the theme of the knowledge of God as an event that brings to its destination a free and personal initiative of the love of God, which acts in view of the success of such encounter. The philosophical and theological reflection seeks to deepen, in the reciprocal exchange of competences, the structure of this exchange between truth, justice and love of God, in which (...) the metaphysical-ontological and the ethical-existential profile of knowledge of Him illuminate each other only together, through the embrace of their intrinsic connection. (shrink)

By using algebraic-categorical tools, we establish four criteria in order to disprove canonicity, strong completeness, w-canonicity and strong w-completeness, respectively, of an intermediate propositional logic. We then apply the second criterion in order to get the following result: all the logics defined by extra-intuitionistic one-variable schemata, except four of them, are not strongly complete. We also apply the fourth criterion in order to prove that the Gabbay-de Jongh logic D1 is not strongly w-complete.

Otto Hintze was an excellent example of the cultural turmoil that hit historical and political studies in the great crisis between nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with respect to the destiny of the European tradition and its projection in a political world dominated by new universalistic perspectives. Hintze moved thus between a historiography which was for long time attentive to the Prussian case – which he considered almost a paradigm of the modern State – and political science, in constant tension with (...) Weber’s contemporary foundation of a comprehensive sociology. The essay attempts to investigate the foundational question of legitimacy as the deepest and most innovative character of Hintze’s work. (shrink)

The Author asks himself if the peculiar mode of application of the nexus doctrine/discipline represented by ideol- ogy constitutes the only possibility for reproducing and maintaining consensus in a political community. The constitutionalism’s curve shows the contrary: in the beginning constitutionalism developed as a common field between different ideologies, still it survived their crisis, and has opened a new mode of social and political collective behaviour, defined by the author as «political discourse». In order to overcome the risk of political (...) neutralization produced by the growing importance of technique in the contemporary governance processes, political discourse – considered in its function of language mediator and translator –, might work as an instrument able to link the broken threads of obligation. In order not to reproduce a straight and unilateral political discourse, a radical revision of the concept of measure would be necessary. Measure should be taken as an instrument for the allocation/distribution of differences and, therefore, as a useful element for the creation of consensus in a mass society. (shrink)

This short methodological insert appears like a homage to Otto Brunner, that in some Italian historical literature continue to be, all things considered, remarkable. Instead it is a homage to my wife Giuliana Nobili, co-founder with me and few others of the journal «Scienza & Politica», died the 5 th January 2015.

The essay is a long confrontation with the reconstruction of the story of the state in Italy that Sabino Cassese has recently provided. Moving from the specificity of the constitutional history of the Italian state and calling into question the existence of a more or less pure model to which to compare it, the author reclaims the constitutional relevance of the administrative action in the very institutionalization of the state. The practical limits of the Italian constitutional story, its missed general (...) integration, the contingency of various measures, the definetly unsystematic and eclectic character of many institutions and doctrines are considered, though, as the evidence of the historically declining character of the whole story of the modern state and of the possibility for the administration itself to give instruments which are adequate to the present global scenarios. (shrink)

The introduction starts from the exhaustion of modernity, drawing the fundamental lines of its development inside Western historical experience. The end of the political nexus between theology and politics, the evanescence of nation-state sovereignty, the check of great historical interpretations reveal the necessity of new categories and new organizational models, able to make us answer to the violence that the ongoing processes are liberating. Schiera underlines in particular the relevance of the administrative apparatus because of its capacity to link the (...) global government with global organization, human rights and the commons. (shrink)

We provide results allowing to state, by the simple inspection of suitable classes of posets , that the corresponding intermediate propositional logics are maximal among the ones which satisfy the disjunction property. Starting from these results, we directly exhibit, without using the axiom of choice, the Kripke frames semantics of 2No maximal intermediate propositional logics with the disjunction property. This improves previous evaluations, giving rise to the same conclusion but made with an essential use of the axiom of choice, of (...) the cardinality of the set of the maximal intermediate propositional logics with the disjunction property. (shrink)

Few thinkers have left such an influence across such a diverse range of studies as Michel Foucault has. This book pays homage to that diversity by presenting a multidisciplinary series of analyses dedicated to the question of power today.

This books presents the refereed proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on Analytic Tableaux and Related Methods, TABLEAUX '96, held in Terrasini near Palermo, Italy, in May 1996. The 18 full revised papers included together with two invited papers present state-of-the-art results in this dynamic area of research. Besides more traditional aspects of tableaux reasoning, the collection also contains several papers dealing with other approaches to automated reasoning. The spectrum of logics dealt with covers several nonclassical logics, including modal, intuitionistic, (...) many-valued, temporal and linear logic. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 100 Heft: 2 Seiten: 592-598.

Wenn es 'archetypische' Grund- und Tiefenstrukturen des menschlichen Denkens gibt, dann werden sie uns zugänglich durch ständige Bilder und Metaphern, wie z. B. die vier Grundelemente: Luft, Erde, Wasser, Feuer. Diese Elemente reichten für das Altertum zur Bildung der Welt aus. Diese Sicht der Dinge ist teilweise und in unterschiedlicher Art und Weise auch noch heute festzustellen. Ihre Spuren finden wir in den unzähligen Ausdrucksmodi der Modernität. So läßt sich kurz das Thema dieses Sammelbandes beschreiben, der die Ergebnisse einer Tagung (...) über 'Politische Metaphorik in historischer Perspektive' zusammenfaßt. Sie hat im Frühjahr 1993 in Verbania (Lago Maggiore) stattgefunden und ist vom Seminar für Politikwissenschaft der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, vom italienisch-deutschen historischen Institut in Trento, vom Istituto italiano per gli studi filosofici di Napoli und von der Gemeinde Verbania organisiert worden. Über Metaphern, Bilder und die Zusammenhänge zwischen Bildern, die sich auf die vier Elemente zurückführen lassen, haben Forscher unterschiedlicher kultureller Herkunft diskutiert, Historiker, Philosophen, Linguisten, Literaten und Politologen. Sie alle verbindet das Bewußtsein, daß die Fragen nach den metaphorischen und symbolischen Bedeutungen nur schwer von einem einzigen Zweig der Humanwissenschaften aus und vielleicht sogar nicht einmal von den Humanwissenschaften allein beantwortet werden können. Insgesamt kann man sagen, daß die Stellung und die Identifizierung der Elemente, aus denen das Universum besteht, die durchgängigste Frage der philosophischen und wissenschaftlichen Forschung aller Zeiten gewesen ist. Die Aufgliederung des Universums auf der Grundlage der vier Elemente entspricht überdies in der traditionellen Vorstellungswelt der Struktur des menschlichen Körpers und kann wiederum durch zwei geteilt werden, entsprechend den gegensätzlichen Qualitäten warm und kalt, männlich und weiblich, gut und böse, oben und unten usw. E. (shrink)

A proof is given that the set of maximal intermediate propositional logics with the disjunction property and the set of maximal intermediate predicate logics with the disjunction property and the explicit definability property have the power of continuum. To prove our results, we introduce various notions which might be interesting by themselves. In particular, we illustrate a method to generate wide sets of pairwise "constructively incompatible constructive logics". We use a notion of "semiconstructive" logic and define wide sets of "constructive" (...) logics by representing the "constructive" logics as "limits" of decreasing sequences of "semiconstructive" logics. Also, we introduce some generalizations of the usual filtration techniques for propositional logics. For instance, "filtrations over rank formulas" are used to show that any two different logics belonging to a suitable uncountable set of "constructive" logics are "constructively incompatible". (shrink)

This is the second part of a paper devoted to the study of the maximal intermediate propositional logics with the disjunction property , whose first part has appeared in this journal with the title “A method to single out maximal propositional logics with the disjunction property I”. In the first part we have explained the general results upon which a method to single out maximal constructive logics is based and have illustrated such a method by exhibiting the Kripke semantics of (...) maximal constructive logics extending the logic ST of Scott, for which, in turn, a semantical characterization in terms of Kripke frames has been given. In the present part we complete the illustration of the method of the first part, having in mind some aspects which might be interesting for a classification of the maximal constructive logics, and an application of the heuristic content of the method to detect the nonmaximality of apparently maximal constructive logics. Thus, on the one hand we introduce the logic AST , which is compared with ST and is seen as a logic “alternative” to it, in a sense which will be precisely explained. We provide a Kripke semantics for AST and show that there are maximal constructive logics which neither are extensions of ST nor are extensions of AST. Finally, we give a further application of the results of the first part by exhibiting the Kripke semantics of a maximal constructive logic extending AST. On the other hand, we compare the maximal constructive logics presented in both parts of the paper with a constructive logic introduced by Maksimova , which has been conjectured to be maximal by Chagrov and Zacharyashchev ; from this comparison a disproof of the conjecture arises. (shrink)

Résumé Les ancêtres de la téléréalité, comme l’émission américaine Candid Camera, ont su très tôt mobiliser un charisme de la réalité qui magnétise aujourd’hui un nombre croissant de nos contemporains. Ces pratiques télévisuelles se sont développées en étroite interaction avec les expérimentations faites sur la psychologie sociale et l’hypnose, révélant une convergence entre sciences, technologies médiatiques et mécanismes de pouvoir que cet article s’efforce de faire apparaître dans ses dimensions à la fois historique et théorique.