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Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy

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Issue 2, 2013 Expand all abstracts
Discussion

Access_open The Wisdom of Juries?

Authors Morag Goodwin
Author's information

Morag Goodwin
Morag Goodwin is Associate Professor in International Law at Tilburg Law School.
Article

Access_open Absolute Positivism

Keywords jurisprudence, legal positivism, Hans Kelsen, pure theory of law
Authors Christoph Kletzer
AbstractAuthor's information

    The paper argues that we miss the point and strength of Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law if we take it to drive a middle way between reductionism and moralism. Rather conversely, the Pure Theory is a radical theory. It tries to overcome the opposition between reductionism and moralism by making clear that both opponents rest on the same ill-conceived convictions about legal validity. Both take it that the law cannot be normative by itself. In contrast, the Pure Theory tries to find a new approach to the understanding of law that takes seriously the constitutive functions of law. It tries to understand the validity of law as resting in law itself. As such it is an attempt to find a philosophically satisfactory formulation of what can be called absolute positivism.


Christoph Kletzer
Christoph Kletzer is a Senior Lecturer at the Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College in London.
Article

Access_open Private law and ethical life

Honneth on legal freedom and its pathologies

Keywords Honneth, Hegel, social freedom, legal freedom, law, pathologies
Authors Jan Ph. Broekhuizen
AbstractAuthor's information

    In Das Recht der Freiheit Axel Honneth develops his concept of social freedom. In this article I discuss Honneth’s project and critique one of its crucial aspects: Honneth’s views on the disruptive role of legal freedom in our society and its dependent relation to the sphere of social freedom. I argue that in his attempt in Das Recht der Freiheit to reactualize Hegel’s discourse on the realization of freedom for our time, Honneth risks mistranslating Hegel’s discourse of ‘right’ by denying the sphere of legal relations a constitutive role for true freedom, and that because of this Honneth’s own theory of social freedom suffers: it becomes less clear whether it can still offer helpful insights into the proper place of legal freedom in our society.


Jan Ph. Broekhuizen
Jan Broekhuizen is an attorney (advocaat) in Amsterdam and a deputy judge at the Court of Appeals in Den Bosch (the Netherlands). He holds degrees in both law and philosophy.
Article

Access_open Rechtspraak en waarheid in Aischylos’ Oresteia en Yael Farbers Molora

Keywords Oresteia, tragedy, conflict resolution, truth and reconciliation commission, restorative justice
Authors Lukas van den Berge
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    This article explores the themes of injustice and dehumanization in Aeschylus’ Oresteia and Yael Farber’s Molora, in which the story of the Oresteia is dramatized against the backdrop of post-apartheid South Africa. It is argued that both plays depict wrongdoers and victims alike as social outcasts. Thus, they can both be described with Paul Ricoeur as ‘sketches of a man,’ not being able to live up to their full human potential. Borrowing from Ricoeur’s legal philosophy, it is then explained how public trials and hearings help them to reintegrate into society, in which they can regain their full humanity.


Lukas van den Berge
Lukas van den Berge is researcher at the Montaigne Centre for Judicial Administration and Conflict Resolution of Utrecht University (the Netherlands), where he prepares a dissertation on the theory of administrative procedural law.

Stef Feyen
Stef Feyen (LL.M., Harvard) is a Researcher for the Flemish Research Foundation (FWO) affiliated to the Institute for Constitutional Law at KU Leuven. He prepares a dissertation on the most adequate representation of constitutional interpretation in Europe.

Luigi Corrias
Luigi Corrias is Assistant Professor of Legal Philosophy at VU University Amsterdam.

Paul De Hert
Paul De Hert is Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB) and head of the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Law. He is also the Director of the VUB’s Research Group on Fundamental Rights (FRC).

Anna Johannes
Anna Johannes is Lecturer at the Department of Legal Theory, VU University Amsterdam.

Jaap Zwart
Jaap Zwart is Lecturer at the Department of Legal Theory, VU University Amsterdam.