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Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy

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Issue 1, 2016 Expand all abstracts

Marjoleine Zieck
Dr. Marjoleine Zieck is Professor of International Refugee Law at the Amsterdam Law School of the University of Amsterdam, and Professor of Public International Law at the Pakistan College of Law, Lahore.

    This paper interprets the presumption of innocence as a conceptual antidote for sacrificial tendencies in criminal law. Using Girard’s philosophy of scapegoat mechanisms and sacrifice as hermeneutical framework, the consanguinity of legal and sacrificial order is explored. We argue that some legal concepts found in the ius commune’s criminal system (12th-18th century), like torture, infamy, or punishment for mere suspicion, are affiliated with scapegoat dynamics and operate, to some extent, in the spirit of sacrifice. By indicating how these concepts entail more or less flagrant breaches of our contemporary conception of due process molded by the presumption of innocence, an antithesis emerges between the presumption of innocence and sacrificial inclinations in criminal law. Furthermore, when facing fundamental threats like heresy, the ius commune’s due process could be suspended. What emerges in this state of exception allowing for swift and relentless repression, is elucidated as legal order’s sacrificial infrastructure.


Rafael Van Damme
Rafael Van Damme is PhD-student in philosophy.

    In this article I develop a political realist notion of public reason. It may be thought that a notion of public reason is simply incompatible with the position of the political realist. But this article claims that a realist notion of public reason, different from the familiar political liberal idea of public reason, can be reconstructed from ancient texts on rhetoric and dialectic, particularly Aristotle's. The specification of this notion helps us understand the differences between contemporary liberal and realist positions.


Bertjan Wolthuis
Bertjan Wolthuis is Assistant Professor of Legal Theory at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

    This paper provides a dialectical-historical description of the EU's constitutional discourse. It is argued that the early Community's member state blind principle of justice implied the notion of a European political community and led to the establishment of fair procedures for decision making. This coming of age of an encompassing European constitutional narrative of justice and fairness prompted the question of the demarcation between the political role of the European political community and that of member states' political communities. The answer proved to be subsidiarity. However, subsidiarity has introduced national conceptions of justice in the Union's constitutional discourse, at the risk of making European justice dependent on national conceptions of justice.


Dries Cools
Dries Cools works at the National Bank of Belgium and holds a Master of Laws and a Master in Philosophy of the KU Leuven and an LL.M. of Harvard Law School.
Book Review

Access_open Anne Phillips, The Politics of the Human

Authors Leila Faghfouri Azar
Author's information

Leila Faghfouri Azar
Leila Faghfouri Azar (LL.M., M.A.) is a post-graduate candidate in Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford, Faculty of Law.

Thomas Riesthuis
Thomas Riesthuis is a PhD candidate at Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Ronald Tinnevelt
Ronald Tinnevelt is hoofddocent rechtsfilosofie aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen.

Wouter de Been
Wouter de Been is in 2005 cum laude gepromoveerd bij Willem Witteveen aan de Tilburg Law School met een proefschrift over het Amerikaanse rechtsrealisme. Zijn proefschrift is in 2008 gepubliceerd bij de Stanford University Press onder de titel Legal Realism Regained. Hij was co-redacteur en co-auteur van de bundel Crossroads in New Media, Identity and Law, die in 2015 werd uitgebracht door Palgrave, en co-redacteur van de bundel Facts and Norms in Law, die in 2016 zal uitkomen bij Edward Elgar.

Tamar de Waal
Tamar de Waal is a PhD candidate legal and political theory at the Paul Scholten Centre, University of Amsterdam (Law Faculty).

Erik De Bom
Erik De Bom is an intellectual historian and political theorist, who is affiliated as a postdoctoral researcher to the Institute of Philosophy (KU Leuven). He specializes in early modern political thought (esp. sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) and normative political theory (esp. with regard to the European Union). Among his research interests are questions related to social justice, sovereignty, boundaries and migration.