Thirty-five papers by outstanding specialists of philosophy of law and comparative law from Western Europe, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, as well as from Northern America and Japan, dedicated to the Hungarian philosopher of law and comparatist Csaba Varga.

Legal theorists tend to focus on disagreement over the law, and yet a theory of law should also explain why lawyers and judges agree on the law as often as they do. To that end, this article first pins down a precise sense in which there can be pervasive agreement on the law. It then argues that such agreement obtains in the United States and likely in many other jurisdictions as well. Finally, it contends that Hartian Positivism offers a straightforward (...) explanation of this phenomenon and, indeed, a better explanation than rival theories, like Ronald Dworkin’s Law as Integrity or Scott Shapiro’s Planning Theory. Given the ubiquity of legal agreement, Hartian Positivism’s explanatory superiority in this regard is a strong, albeit still not dispositive, consideration in its favour. The broader lesson is that theories of law should give greater priority to explaining legal agreement than many theories now do. (shrink)

After proposing an alternative definition of what “law” (jurisprudential concept) is, this article demonstrates the impossibility of identifying “the law” (what law-makers announce, relative to a particular jurisdiction) as something that is in a particular way. Rather, the law is a more or less abstract range of options. Drawing upon this conclusion, the article calls for a reassessment of how we view the role of law-makers. We need to remove the mystery that surrounds the law so as to provide for (...) greater transparency. This transparency can be gained by requiring law-makers to declare their inescapable biases where they influence their lawmaking. (shrink)

In this essay, one of Derrida’s early texts, Plato’s pharmacy, is analysed in detail, more specifically in relation to its reflections on writing and its relation to law. This analysis takes place with reference to a number of Derrida’s other texts, in particular those on Freud. It is especially Freud’s texts on dream interpretation and on the dream-work which are of assistance in understanding the background to Derrida’s analysis of writing in Plato’s pharmacy. The essay shows the close relation between (...) Derrida’s analysis of Plato’s texts and Freud’s study of the dream-work. The forces at work in dreams, it appears, are at play in all texts, which in turn explains Derrida’s contentions in relation to the pharmakon as providing the condition of possibility of Plato’s texts. The essay furthermore points to the continuity between this ‘early’ text of Derrida and his ‘later’, seemingly more politico-legal texts of the 1990s. A close reading of Plato’s pharmacy, with its investigation via ‘writing’ of the foundations of metaphysics, and thus also of the Western concept of law, is obligatory should one wish to comprehend how Derrida attempts to exceed the restricted economy of metaphysics through his analysis of concepts such as justice and hospitality. (shrink)

This thesis explores the significance of Godel's Theorem for an understanding of law as rules, and of legal adjudication as rule-following. It argues that Godel's Theorem, read through Wittgenstein's understanding of rules and language as a contextual activity, and through Derrida's account of 'undecidability,' offers an alternative account of the relationship of judging to justice. Instead of providing support for the 'indeterminacy' claim, Godel's Theorem illuminates the predicament of undecidability that structures any interpretation and every legal decision, and which constitutes (...) the opening to justice. The first argument in this thesis examines Godel's proof, Wittgenstein's views on rules, and Derrida's undecidability, as manifestations of a common concern with the limits of what can be formalized. The meta-argument examines their misinterpretation and misappropriation within legal theory as a case study of just what they mean about meaning, context, and justice as necessarily co-implicated. (shrink)