ethics

A short history of the British Critical Legal Conference or the responsibility of the critic

Prof. dr Costas Douzinas

Birkbeck, University of London

English abstract: General jurisprudence is a type of thinking about law and the social bond developed by British critical legal scholars. Returning to the classical concerns of (legal) philosophy, it examines the legal aspects of social reproduction both inside and outside state law, treating posited law as a part of wider legality. It brings back to the centre the aesthetic, ethical and material aspects of legality, as well as includes the political economy of law, the legal constructions of subjectivity and the ways in which gender, race or sexuality create forms of identity both disciplining bodies and offering sites of resistance. The British Critical Legal Conference (CLC) is a school of thought committed to a plurality of theoretical approaches to law and to radical politics. The first CLC took place in 1985 and has taken place annually without interruption since. The CLC has introduced a number of themes, approaches and strategies unknown or dismissed by mainstream scholarship, including semiotics, rhetoric, literature, aesthetics and psychoanalysis. A variety of critical schools, such as postmodernism, phenomenology, postcolonialism, critical race, feminism, queer theory, art theory and history, the ethics of otherness, the ontology of plural singularity, the critique of biopolitics and post–politics have been pioneered in the CLC.

Keywords: Critical Legal Studies, aesthetics, ethics, British Critical Legal Conference

Language: Polish
Translated by: Rafał Mańko

Published: Number 1(8)/2014, pp. 5-17

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Number of downloads: 31

On three limitations of the lawyers’ power

Dr Paweł Jabłoński, Dr Przemysław Kaczmarek

University of Wrocław

English abstract: According to the initially assumed concept of limitations of lawyers’ power the most important elements of those limitations are: legal text, legal culture, and ethics. This structure is characterized by the relations where the anterior element defines the framework of the latter, i. e. text affects legal culture and ethics, while legal culture affects ethics. However, exceptions apply where the latter element might lead to the collapse of the framework of the primary factor (for instance, interpretation contra legem based on axiological argumentation). The aforementioned structure of limitations of legal power is complemented by interaction of various other elements, such as social expectations, political entanglement (depending on the extent to which it is not consumed by ethics) and non-judicial expertise.

Keywords: limitations of the lawyers’ power, legal text, legal culture, ethics

Language: Polish

Published: Number 1(6)/2013, pp. 93-108.

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Number of downloads: 23

Formalism in the application of law and ethics on the example of environmental law regulations

Mgr inż. Adrian Zając

University of Wrocław

English abstract: This paper discusses formalism, a multi-faceted and problematic research topic when applied to law. The most important point of reference in the presented point of view is ethics. That is why the author emphasizes the importance of asking whether formalism is an ethical behaviour in the context of applying the law. The application of law is presented using the following two conceptions: as a behavior of officials, acting as public administration authorities, and as a theoretical model of this phenomenon. This paper is mostly about the first conception: the behaviour of officials and authorities. The problem of formalism and the effects it can lead to are discussed on the basis of specific laws and regulations concerning environmental protection. Research shows that formalism is based on lack of care for the integrity of the legal text and lack of officials’ consistency in recreating the intention of the lawmaker. This kind of activity is presented as unethical, as it may cause unjustified, negative effects in the life of the individual who is a party to the proceedings.

Keywords: ethics, application of law, formalism, environmental protection law

Language: Polish

Received: 06.06.2017
Accepted: 08.09.2017

Published: Number 1(16)/2018, pp. 83-93.

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Number of downloads: 13

On the structure of normative intuitions: universal moral grammar

Mgr Maciej Próchnicki

Jagiellonian University

English abstract: The aim of the article is to critically characterize the new, interdisciplinary research program on morality: universal moral grammar, and to describe its meaning for jurisprudence. Its proponents, such as John Mikhail and Marc Hauser, refer to John Rawls’ linguistic analogy, i.e. comparison of morality to language and suggestion to study it similarly to Noam Chomsky’s generative linguistics paradigm.

According to moral grammarians morality, like language, settles on innate, universal cognitive capacities, common to all people. Some evidence supporting these claim, come from various scientific disciplines, such as developmental psychology, neuroscience, anthropology or logic, but they are criticised as weak and inconclusive.

The article tries to assess to what extent the linguistic analogy is accurate and useful, analyzing some of the most important N. Chomsky’s claims and their adaptations to the systems of social norms, such as morality and law. The first argument is so called poverty of the stimulus, assuming that the classic learning mechanisms cannot explain the phenomenon of acquisition of language and morals. Other elements of N. Chomsky’s theories adapted to analyze morality include characterizing morality as a system of principles and parameters, divisions between I-morality/E-morality and competence/performance, and also an assumption that the specialized mental module for it exists.

Research conducted in universal moral grammar program may have substantial influence on jurisprudence. Firstly, assumptions made by moral grammarians can be seen as a construction of a modern, naturalized theory of natural law, based on empirical study. Moreover, the goal of the program is to fully describe concepts such as guilt, act, obligation or damage, and as an effect to schematize it as an advanced deontic logic, and also to discover sources of intuitions regarding them not only through research on their biopsychological foundations, but also through legal anthropology and comparative legal studies.

Keywords ethics, legal philosophy, generative linguistics, moral psychology, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, Noam Chomsky

Language: Polish

Received: 02.10.2016
Accepted: 28.11.2016

Published: Numer 1(14)/2017, pp. 102-114.

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Number of downloads: 43