This book fills a major gap in the ever-increasing secondary literature on Hannah Arendt's political thought by providing a dedicated and coherent treatment of the many, various and interesting things which Arendt had to say about law. Often obscured by more pressing or more controversial aspects of her work, Arendt nonetheless had interesting insights into Greek and Roman concepts of law, human rights, constitutional design, legislation, sovereignty, international tribunals, judicial review and much more. This book retrieves these aspects of her (...) legal philosophy for the attention of both Arendt scholars and lawyers alike. The book brings together lawyers as well as Arendt scholars drawn from a range of disciplines (philosophy, political science, international relations), who have engaged in an internal debate the dynamism of which is captured in print. Following the editors' introduction, the book is split into four Parts: Part I explores the concept of law in Arendt's thought; Part II explores legal aspects of Arendt's constitutional thought: first locating Arendt in the wider tradition of republican constitutionalism, before turning attention to the role of courts and the role of parliament in her constitutional design. In Part III Arendt's thought on international law is explored from a variety of perspectives, covering international institutions and international criminal law, as well as the theoretical foundations of international law. Part IV debates the foundations, content and meaning of Arendt's famous and influential claim that the 'right to have rights' is the one true human right. (shrink)

Constitutional scholarship has put much emphasis on Montesquieu's principle of separation of powers as developed in the chapter of 'The Spirit of the Laws' devoted to the English constitution (XI, 6). It has also been quite common to mix up this model of separation of powers with elements taken from other sections of Montesquieu's masterpiece. The starting point of this paper is that there is an alternative, second model of separation powers based on the French monarchy of intermediate powers, which (...) is also an instantiation of limited government. From this premise, the paper's aim is to carve out a second version of the principle of separation of powers by focusing on the different role and nature of judicial power in the English and French models. It turns out that the French version of the separation of powers is not based on a strict separation, since it bestows on the higher judicial intermediate bodies both judicial and legislative functions. This also leads to a kind of constitutionalism that is 'in between' ancient and modern, as it is exemplified by Montesquieu's take on the functioning of parliaments. As is typical of his political thought, he sees this intermediate power as representative of traditional and conservative social forces but, at the same time, in virtue of its social status, as an institution which strengthens, by opposing it, the monarch's legislative rationality, and legally contains political action. (shrink)

Even though he is mainly known for his concept of constituent power, Sieyès was one of the first constitutional theorists to ask for a guardian of the constitution which closely resembles contemporary constitutional courts. This article reconstructs the main tenets of his proposal, puts them in the larger context of his constitutional theory and then assesses the constitutional nature and functions of this institution. The judgment is mixed: as an organ, Sieyès’ constitutional jury is a hybrid institution, neither a real (...) third chamber nor a full-fledged constitutional court; however, its functions not only are a clear anticipation of the control of constitutionality, but are also intended to tame constituent power and to protect the rights of man in case of legal gaps. (shrink)

First published in 1917 and 1918, with a second edition in 1946, this is the first English translation of Santi Romano's classic work, L'ordinamento giuridico. The main focus of The Legal Order is the notion of institution, which Romano considers to be both the core and distinguishing feature of law. After criticising accounts of the nature of law centred on notions of rule, coercion or authority, he offers a compelling conception, not merely of law as an institution, but of the (...) institution as 'the first, original and essential manifestation of law'. Romano advances a definition of a legal institution as any group who share rules within a bounded context: for example, a family, a firm, a factory, a prison, an association, a church, an illegal organisation, a state, the community of states, and so on. Therefore, this understanding of legal institutionalism at the same time provides a ground-breaking theory of legal pluralism whereby 'there are as many legal orders as institutions'. The acme of a jurisprudential current long overlooked in the Anglophone environment, The Legal Order not only proposes what Carl Schmitt described as a 'very significant theory', but, more importantly, it offers precious insights for a thorough rethinking of the relationship between law and society in today's world. (shrink)

The introduction looks at the constitutional situation in Chile since the demand for a new Constitution erupted in demonstrations all across the country, and argues that the notion of ‘constitutional moment’ is inadequate to capture the radicality of the popular mobilisation that is sweeping the country as a pure expression of constituent power.

The debate on political constitutionalism has entirely neglected the constitution-making dimension. This is probably due to the fact that constitution-making usually brings with it undesirable outcomes such as the entrenchment of rights or structures. These outcomes do not respect reasonable disagreement among citizens because they violate the only fair system for settling disagreement: majority rule and equal voting rights. This article argues that political constitutionalists may regret the absence of any claim about constitution-making. Either they are overlooking certain problems inherent (...) to the electoral process that is supposed to tackle disagreement or, even worse, they are downplaying the entrenching effect of ordinary political processes by ignoring the redemptive properties of constituent power. In both cases, their claims undermine the political dimension of constitutionalism. (shrink)

L’analisi degli aspetti più innovativi del pensiero di Lawrence Lessig, e in particolare la messa in luce del rapporto fra diritto ed architettura nello spazio digitale, mostra la necessità per le società contemporanee di dotarsi di una “politica” del codice.

Despite a long and venerable tradition, the material constitution almost disappeared from constitutional scholarship after the Second World War. Its marginalisation saw the rise of a normative and legalistic style in constitutional law that neglected the role of social reality and political economy. This collection not only retrieves the history and development of the concept of the material constitution, but it tests its theoretical and practical relevance in the contemporary world. With essays from a diverse range of contributors, the collection (...) demonstrates that the material constitution speaks to several pressing issues, from the significance of economic development in constitutional orders to questions of constitutional identity. Offering original analyses supported by international case studies, this book develops a new model of constitutional reality, one that informs our understanding of the world in profound ways. (shrink)

This Element aims to explore how the relation between societal organisation and legal orders – the question of materiality – has been investigated in philosophy of law. The starting point of the Element is that such relation has often been left invisible or thematised in poor and reductive terms. After having explained the main reasons behind this neglect, the Element provides an overview of the three main approaches to legal philosophy whose contributions, though not always effective, can still provide some (...) insights for a contemporary analysis of legal orders' materiality: materialism, legal institutionalism, and the new materialism. The last section of the Element suggests looking for a footing for the study of materiality in two fields: the metaphysics of relations and the political economy of legal orders. (shrink)

A partire dal commento ad una sentenza sul problema della discriminazione razziale in una scuola privata, Cover presenta una teoria del pluralismo normativo fondata sulla distinzione fra autorità e significato. A tale dicotomia è dovuta la “proliferazione” dei mondi normativi e delle interpretazioni costituzionali. L’autore descrive i processi di formazione dei significati giuridici – la cosiddetta “giusgenesi” – ed offre una teoria della giurisdizione adatta ad un universo giuridico connotato da un radicale pluralismo. Così facendo, Cover intende mettere in luce (...) il potenziale trasformativo del diritto e in particolare del costituzionalismo. (shrink)

Critical theory encapsulates the many connections between theory and praxis. This Research Handbook addresses the broad range of these connections in relation to legal thought. Featuring contributions from leading scholars of law and critical theory, the Handbook confronts the logic of the institutional with its specific challenges right across the broad field of legal thought. The Research Handbook initially addresses the question of definition, tracking the origins and development of critical legal theory along its European and North American trajectories. Thematic (...) connections are made between the development of legal theory and other currents of critical thought including feminism, Marxism, critical race theory, varieties of postmodernism, as well as the various 'turns' (ethical, aesthetic, political) of critical legal theory. Finally, particular legal disciplines are examined, including labour, criminal and intellectual property law, exploring what critical approaches reveal about them with the clear focus on opportunities for social transformation. This comprehensive and forward-looking Research Handbook will be of great interest to adherents of critical legal theory and scholars of jurisprudence more widely, as it provides a valuable analysis of the latest research and thinking in this dynamic field. (shrink)

Why are mistaken beliefs about Covid-19 so prevalent? Political identity, education and other demographic variables explain only a part of individual differences in the susceptibility to Covid-19 misinformation. This paper focuses on another explanation: epistemic vice. Epistemic vices are character traits that interfere with acquiring, maintaining, and transmitting knowledge. If the basic assumption of vice epistemology is right, then people with epistemic vices such as indifference to the truth or rigidity in their belief structures will tend to be more susceptible (...) to believing Covid-19 misinformation. We carried out an observational study (US sample, n = 998) in which we measured the level of epistemic vice of participants using a novel Epistemic Vice Scale. We also asked participants questions eliciting the extent to which they subscribe to myths and misinformation about Covid-19. We find overwhelming evidence to the effect that epistemic vice is associated with susceptibility to Covid-19 misinformation. In fact, the association turns out to be stronger than with political identity, educational attainment, scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test, personality, dogmatism, and need for closure. We conclude that this offers evidence in favor of the empirical presuppositions of vice epistemology. (shrink)

We prove that the category of Nachbin’s compact ordered spaces and order-preserving continuous maps between them is dually equivalent to a variety of algebras, with operations of at most countable arity. Furthermore, we observe that the countable bound on the arity is the best possible: the category of compact ordered spaces is not dually equivalent to any variety of finitary algebras. Indeed, the following stronger results hold: the category of compact ordered spaces is not dually equivalent to any finitely accessible (...) category, any first-order definable class of structures, and any class of finitary algebras closed under products and subalgebras. An explicit equational axiomatisation of the dual of the category of compact ordered spaces is obtained; in fact, we provide a finite one, meaning that our description uses only finitely many function symbols and finitely many equational axioms. In preparation for the latter result, we establish a generalisation of a celebrated theorem by Mundici: our result—whose proof is independent of Mundici’s theorem—asserts that the category of unital commutative distributive lattice-ordered monoids is equivalent to the category of what we call MV-monoidal algebras.Abstract taken directly from the thesis.E-mail: marco[email protected]: https://air.unimi.it/retrieve/handle/2434/812809/1698986/phd_unimi_R11882.pdf. (shrink)

Karl R. Popper e Raymond Aron foram dois dos mais destacados pensadores do século XX, notadamente a partir da segunda guerra mundial. Sendo o primeiro um destacado epistemólogo e filósofo político e o segundo um filósofo social e político, entre suas mais diversas obras encontramos um denominador comum, a crítica epistemológica das ciências humanas. O presente trabalho tem por objetivo investigar os possíveis pontos de contato entre os dois filósofos, bem como suas divergências. Como metodologia de estudo, nos centraremos nos (...) textos produzidos pelos autores que tenham como tema principal a epistemologia das ciências humanas. Notadamente, encontraremos em ambos uma crítica ao historicismo como fundamento das humanidades. Palavras-chave: Karl Popper, Raymond Aron, Historicismo. (shrink)

O ficcionalismo, geralmente classificado como um tipo de nominalismo, apresenta como perspectiva precípua a tese de que os entes matemáticos são ficções. Para o ficcionalista, o discurso matemático é desprovido de conteúdo. Hartry Field, que é o principal defensor dessa concepção ontológica da matemática, contesta, em Science Without Numbers, a utilização de entes matemáticos na redação de teorias da física, alegando que a defesa mais plausível do realismo ontológico matemático é o argumento da indispensabilidade de Quine-Putnam. O ficcionalismo defendido por (...) Field nos permite, de acordo com Shapiro, classificá-lo no grupo filosofia-primeiro, ou seja, entre os filósofos que defendem que a filosofia deve ser responsável por legislar a respeito da prática matemática. Dessa forma, podemos considerar Field um revisionista epistemológico. Como se sabe, a dependência da ciência moderna em relação ao discurso matemático coloca a tese ficcionalista em xeque. Ainda assim, se partirmos dos pressupostos filosóficos da vertente formalista da filosofia da matemática, que concebe a matemática como constituída de um conjunto de regras sem significado que podem ser manipuladas de maneira puramente sintática, poderemos traçar importantes analogias entre matemática e ficção, tal como também entre metamatemática e metaficção. Para um formalista simpático à tese ficcionalista, o estatuto ontológico da matemática é semelhante ao das regras de um jogo de xadrez. (shrink)

A view that emancipates free will by means of quantum indeterminism is frequently rejected based on arguments pointing out its incompatibility with what we know about quantum physics. However, if one carefully examines what classical physical causal determinism and quantum indeterminism are according to physics, it becomes clear what they really imply–and, especially, what they do not imply–for agent-causation theories. Here, we will make necessary conceptual clarifications on some aspects of physical determinism and indeterminism, review some of the major objections (...) against libertarian conjectures, and show that there is no conceptual incompatibility preventing us from taking a ‘quantum-libertarian’ approach to the problem of free will. In particular, we will illustrate the possible role of self-causation (causa sui) as a potential solution to otherwise apparently incompatible or even paradoxical statements concerning free will and quantum indeterminism. (shrink)

According to the extended cognition thesis, an agent’s cognitive system can sometimes include extracerebral components amongst its physical constituents. Here, we show that such a view of cognition has an unjustifiably anthropocentric focus, for it tends to depict cognitive extensions as a human-only affair. In contrast, we will argue that if human cognition extends, then the cognition of many non-human animals extends too, for many non-human animals rely on the same cognition-extending strategies humans rely on. To substantiate this claim, we (...) will proceed as follows. First (Sect. 1), we will introduce the extended cognition thesis, exposing its anthropocentric bias. Then, we will show that humans and many non-human animals rely on the same cognition-extending strategies. To do so, we will discuss a variety of case studies, including “intrabodily” cognitive extensions such as the spinal cord (Sect. 2), the widespread reliance on epistemic actions to solve cognitive tasks (Sect. 3) and cases of animal cognitive offloading (Sect. 4). We’ll then allay some worries our claim might raise (Sect. 5) to then conclude the paper (Sect. 6). (shrink)

The Routledge International Handbook of Neuroaesthetics is an authoritative reference work that provides the reader with a wide-ranging introduction to this exciting new scientific discipline. The book brings together leading international academics to offer a well-balanced overview of this burgeoning field while addressing two questions central to the field; how the brain computes aesthetic appreciation for sensory objects, and how is art created and experienced.

The abrupt beginning of the Philebus refers to the abrupt interruption of the dialogue with Callicles in the Gorgias. The reuse of the phrase αὐτὸς γνώσῃ (Phlb. 12a9 = Gorg. 505c9), unique in Plato, is an evident sign of the will to connect the two texts and contexts. Both of them deal with the problem of the interruption of the philosophical dialogue. The absolute lack of contextualization and the ‘open’ conclusion in the Philebus are consistent with this framework. The continuity (...) with the Gorgias is also a fundamental reason why Socrates returns as protagonist in a late dialogue. It also allows us to put forward a hypothesis on the identity of Philebus, an emblematic character like Callicles. (shrink)

Gorgias, the teacher of Isocrates, is rarely mentioned in Isocrates’ works and never in a flattering way. He is also presented, among other masters and poets, on Isocrates’ grave in a way that appears to be consistent with his pupil’s thought. Thus, the author of the iconographic plan of the grave may have been either Isocrates himself or someone who suffi­ciently knew his works and properly understood his tempestuous rela­tionship with his master.

In this article, I address a controversial aspect of Rawls’s treatment of the question of justice between generations: how the parties in the original position could be motivated to select Rawls’s preferred principle of intergenerational savings, which he dubs the just savings principle. I focus on the explanation found in his later work, where he proposes that the correct savings principle is the principle that any generation would have wanted preceding generations to have followed. By expanding upon this explanation, I (...) respond to the objection that this explanation disregards the perspective of the first generation. I demonstrate that this objection ceases to be a concern when a proper account of the parties’ reasoning is developed. What is notable about the explanation I defend is that it relies on the parties adopting maximax – not maximin – as a rule for rational decision making. Having established this intermediary conclusion, I depart with Rawls and consider what savings principle the parties would choose if given more options. Ultimately, I argue that the parties would select a principle that Rawls would have undoubtedly rejected if presented to him at face value. This is because the principle of savings I argue would be selected requires continual economic growth over generations to increase upwards indefinitely – a conclusion Rawls is explicitly trying to avoid in his theory of justice. (shrink)