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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence
The Place Of Legitimacy In Legal Theory, Dan Priel
The Place Of Legitimacy In Legal Theory, Dan Priel
Articles & Book Chapters
In this essay I argue that in order to understand debates in jurisprudence one needs to distinguish clearly between four concepts: validity, content, normativity, and legitimacy. I show that this distinction helps us, first, make sense of fundamental debates in jurisprudence between legal positivists and Dworkin: these should not be understood, as they often are, as debates on the conditions of validity, but rather as debates on the right way of understanding the relationship between these four concepts. I then use this distinction between the four concepts to criticize legal positivism. The positivist account begins with an attempt to explain …
The Intelligibility Of Extralegal State Action: A General Lesson For Debates On Public Emergencies And Legality, François Tanguay-Renaud
The Intelligibility Of Extralegal State Action: A General Lesson For Debates On Public Emergencies And Legality, François Tanguay-Renaud
Articles & Book Chapters
Some legal theorists deny that states can conceivably act extralegally in the sense of acting contrary to domestic law. This position finds its most robust articulation in the writings of Hans Kelsen and has more recently been taken up by David Dyzenhaus in the context of his work on emergencies and legality. This paper seeks to demystify their arguments and ultimately contend that we can intelligibly speak of the state as a legal wrongdoer or a legally unauthorized actor.
Book Review: Justice In Robes By Ronald Dworkin (2006), Dan Priel
Book Review: Justice In Robes By Ronald Dworkin (2006), Dan Priel
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Since the 1960's Ronald Dworkin has been arguing for a particular account of law that he believed was both explanatorily superior to the one offered by competing theories, and also the basis for normative arguments for producing right answers to legal questions. Justice in Robes collects Dworkin's most recent essays on this subject and thus provides the appropriate opportunity for assessing the legal theory of one of the more influential legal philosophers. In this Review I seek to offer a clearer account than appears in the book itself of Dworkin's project, and in this way offer a measured assessment of …
Governance And Anarchy In The S.2(B) Jurisprudence: A Comment On Vancouver Sun And Harper V. Canada, Jamie Cameron
Governance And Anarchy In The S.2(B) Jurisprudence: A Comment On Vancouver Sun And Harper V. Canada, Jamie Cameron
Articles & Book Chapters
The article identifies and explains a double standard in the Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence. The contrast is between the open court jurisprudence, which is a model of good constitutional governance – or principled decision making – and the Court’s s.2(b) methodology, which is “anarchistic” or capricious and undisciplined, in the sense of this article. Two landmark cases decided in 2004 illustrate the double standard: the first is Re Vancouver Sun, [2004] 2 S.C.R. 332, which dealt with the open court principle under Parliament’s anti-terrorism provision for investigative hearings, it represents a high water mark for open court and s.2(b) …
The Myth Of Retributive Justice, Brian Slattery
The Myth Of Retributive Justice, Brian Slattery
Articles & Book Chapters
In fairy tales, villains usually come to a bad end, snared in a trap of their own making, or visited with a disaster nicely suited to their particular villainy. Read a story of this kind to children and you will be struck by the profound satisfaction with which this predictable of events is greeted. Yet, if children cheer when the villain is done in, they are just as satisfied when the hero manages to get the villain by the throat but takes pity and spares him. These tales of retribution and mercy, even reduced to their barest bones, seem to …
The Last Emperor?, Allan C. Hutchinson
Rights, Communities, And Tradition, Brian Slattery
Rights, Communities, And Tradition, Brian Slattery
Articles & Book Chapters
This paper argues that there is a close connection between basic human rights and communal bonds. It criticizes the philosophical views of Alan Gewirth and Alasdair MacIntyre, which in differing ways deny this connection.