This paper investigates force shift, a phenomenon in which the canonical discourse conventions, or force, associated with a clause type can be overridden to yield polar questions with the help of additional force-indicating devices. Previous studies attribute force shift to the presence of a complex question force component operating on semantic content. Based on utterance particles and particle clusters in Cantonese, we analyze force shift as resulting from compositional operations on force-bearing expressions. We (...) propose that a simplex force, such as assertion or question, denotes unanchored sentence acts, while a force-shifting particle like Cantonese _ho2_ is an anchoring function anchoring a sentence act to the speaker while querying whether or not the addressee can perform the sentence act. The proposed semantics makes predictions about _ho2_’s interactions with addressee-changing operations and imperatives, as well as about a larger family of force shift phenomena. (shrink)

Let (leeway) incompatibilism be the thesis that causal determinism is incompatible with the freedom to do otherwise. Several prominent authors have claimed that incompatibilism alone can capture, or at least best captures, the intuitive appeal behind Jorge Luis Borges's famous “Garden of Forking Paths” metaphor. The thought, briefly, is this: the “single path” leading up to one's present decision represents the past; the forking paths that one must decide between represent those possible futures consistent with the past and the (...) class='Hi'>laws of nature. But if determinism is true, there is only one possible future consistent with the past and the laws and, hence, only one path to choose from. That is, if determinism is true, then we are not free to do otherwise. In this paper, I argue that this understanding of the Garden of Forking Paths faces a number of problems and ought to be rejected even by incompatibilists. I then present an alternative understanding that not only avoids these problems but still supports incompatibilism. Finally, I consider how various versions of (leeway) compatibilism fit with the Garden of Forking Paths as well as the broader question of whether metaphors, however intuitive, have any dialectical force in the debates over freedom. (shrink)

Many people are uncomfortable with the idea that pleasure from certain sources is genuinely beneficial. These sources can be sorted into two classes: ones that involve others’ pain; and ones that involve what seems to be damage rather than benefit to the person involved. Here’s an example of the latter: a woman who claims that she enjoys her work performing in hard-core pornographic films. Some find it hard to take such a claim at face value – they instinctively assume that (...) the woman is insincere or self-deceived.1 The reason seems a strongly paternalistic one: because the activity is assumed to be bad, it’s thought that only someone who was in some way damaged could genuinely like it. A statement from Brian Hill, the director of a documentary about such women, illustrates this: ‘I felt certain that she couldn’t enjoy what she does, that there must be some reason why she’s undergoing this kind of experience. But there was nothing: no messed-up childhood, no sense of pain or humiliation.’ Forced to conclude that the woman in question really does enjoy her work, Hill changes his view to imply that the pleasure gained cannot be truly beneficial: ‘When I hear a young woman talking about doing videos of fisting and asphyxiation, I have to wonder what it’s doing to her – even if she says that she’s having fun.’. (shrink)

The so-called ‘Humean’ view of motivation is pretty standard in the Philosophy of Mind. Its most prominent contemporary defender, Michael Smith, calls it a ‘dogma’. Humeans believe in a strict divide between beliefs and desires. Beliefs have no intrinsic motivating force: I may believe anything at all, but only with the contribution of a separate desire will I be motivated to act. This claim should be broadened out to include all cognitive states (belief, knowledge…). The Humean claim is that (...) cognitive states are wholly lacking in conative power. If some beliefs seem to us to motivate action, that can only be due to a contingent association with a separate conative state. (shrink)

Legal positivists typically describe law as ‘thinly’ normative to distinguish it from the ‘thick’ normative force moral norms have; which legal norms may lack. One popular account of thin normativity is social normativity. But a number of scholars have offered accounts of what it is to be a thin norm that are distinct from social normativity. This paper addresses these alternative accounts of what it is to be a thin norm. It also explores whether law counts as necessarily ‘thinly (...) normative’ on these accounts. I argue that some accounts of thin normativity are so generic (‘super-thin’) that they are unable to distinguish between (thin) norms and nonnormative facts and thus collapse into triviality. I also consider more metaphysically demanding accounts of thin normativity, such as the view that everything is a norm that is essentially represented by deontic modals. However, law might fail to meet the demands of these slightly thicker accounts. I thus propose a view of law as consisting in nonnormative facts (diagnostic categories) and suggest sketching accounts of thin normativity as contingent, rather than necessary, features of laws and legal systems. (shrink)

Sexual and reproductive health is a challenge worldwide, and much progress is needed to reach the relevant UN Sustainable Development Goals. This paper presents cross-sectional data collected in Sierra Leone on sexual and gender-based violence, family planning, child, early and forced marriage, and female genital mutilation using an innovative method of measurement: situational judgment tests, as a subset of questions within a larger survey tool. For the SJTs, respondents saw hypothetical scenarios on these themes and had to indicate how they (...) would react. The objective is to give an impression of beliefs and norms on specific behaviors, which provide insights for social and behavior change interventions. Data was collected by enumerators traveling to villages randomly selected in six districts of the country. The sample is composed of 566 respondents. Results show that FGM in particular seem to be a priority topic, in comparison to the other topics for which the norms seem to be stronger against those practices. Age differences emerged and suggest priority groups to be targeted. In terms of validity of the measurement methods, situational judgment test answers correlated positively with other items in the survey, but the magnitude of the association is often small, and sometimes not significant. Thus, more studies are needed to further explore the validity of this measure by comparing against a reference value. Using SJTs could complement other data collection tools to perform community assessment, and orient the direction of the program in its planning phase. (shrink)

Each of us is embodied. Our relationships are reinforced and swayed by physiological processes. States that impose unwanted childbirth on women also force them into unwanted bonds of care. While most people who have given birth understand this because they experienced it, this formative experience is alien to cisgender men. Yet the physiological changes that birthing people undergo are points that few commentators on abortion raise. There are several possible reasons for this, including concerns about reifying biological processes that (...) have been used to assert alleged truths about the “natural” role of women in society and culture. I discuss the physiological underpinnings of maternal/neonate bonds, the importance of this issue in the abortion debate, and the role it ought to play, while keeping in mind the valid critiques of historical and current appeals to biology as a means of subjugating women socially and culturally. (shrink)

The ArgumentIn this we explore some of the ways in which a state scientific laboratory (Daresbury SERC) reacted to the rtetoric and forces of the marketpace in the 1980s. We describe laboratory attempts to create what we call “good customers” while converting itself into a “good seller” by developing a particulat set of costing practicting that were closely related to the implementation of a management accounting system. Finally, we consider how Daresbury response to “market forces” influenced scintific and organzational practice, (...) and arsponse that the social technologies of governmentality performed by accountancy — but also by scientific and bureaucratic practice are complex, discursively heterogeneou, and used in context-sensitive ways. This means, or so we suggest, that it is difficult to mount general argunents about “science” and “the market,” and that the use of such large-scale institions impedes impedes analysis. (shrink)

In Law’s Empire, Ronald Dworkin introduces an important distinction between what he calls the ‘grounds’ and the ‘force’ of law. The former primarily interest Dworkin in LE and concern the “circumstances in which particular propositions of law should be taken to be sound or true.” (110) Propositions of law, we are told, are “all the various statements and claims people make about what the law allows or prohibits or entitles them to have.” (4) That Canadians owing income tax to (...) the federal government must file their returns before April 30 or face a late penalty is presumably an example of a proposition of law. That the United States constitution prohibits slavery is another. These (true) propositions of law simply report the law’s (present) requirements, requirements which normally should be respected but which might justifiably be disobeyed or disregarded in exceptional cases. A true proposition of law, then, does not necessarily entail an answer to the question: What should I do, or decide (if called upon to render a judicial decision)? It also does not necessarily entail an answer to the question: Should the coercive power of the state be exercised against this person? (shrink)

This paper examines Jacques Derrida's analysis of Walter Benjamin's ‘Critique of Violence’ in the context of their respective theories of the university. Whereas Derrida foregrounds the complex ways that the university and law are intertwined, Benjamin claims that the ‘educative power’ stands removed from the law by identifying the university with ‘divine violence’. ‘Force of Law’ not only questions the possibility of a neutral, pre-legal space that Benjamin's theory warrants, ‘Force of Law’ also draws attention to the (...) class='Hi'>laws structuring the colloquia that gave rise to Derrida's text. This paper claims that Derrida's analysis of justice, law, violence, and justesse is thus informed by a theory of the university, and that the ways in which Derrida's theory of law stands opposed to Benjamin's parallels the ways in which Derrida's theory of the university questions Benjamin's understanding of the ‘educative power’. This paper concludes by drawing attention to the demand posed by the absence of justice in the academy. Although the laws of the academy produce justesse in the present, this negatively affirms justice in the future, which cannot wait. (shrink)

The foundations of law have been the object ofintense philosophical scrutiny since antiquity.Most importantly, it has been asked whetherthere are really any foundations other thansheer force to be found once more comfortingillusions are abandoned. This paperinvestigates four influential theorists ofradical legal philosophy and postmodern thought who dealwith this problem in comparable ways despitetheir different theoretical outlooks. Themerits of these theories having been assessed,mentalism in ethics and law is introduced as apossible alternative to both the widespreadfoundationalism of the past and (...) theanti-foundationalism of the postmodern present. (shrink)

Prologue : consistency and conceptual variations -- Introduction : the socialization of international lawyers -- PART I. THE FOUNDATIONAL DOCTRINES -- 1. Subjects -- 2. Sources -- 3. Law-making -- 4. Institutions -- 5. Effectivity -- PART II. THE ARGUMENTATIVE TECHNIQUES -- 6. Methodology -- 7. Interpretation -- 8. Academic writing -- 9. Dissemination -- 10. Expert blogging.

In ‘Force of Law’, Derrida’s discussion of the ‘unstable’ distinction between law and justice exemplifies the deconstructive double bind and makes this a very significant text in virtue of its juridical, political and ethical import. The first section focuses on Derrida’s deployment of the polysemous term ‘force’. ‘Force’ refers to the enforceability of the law but also to the performative and interpretative foundational violence at the moment when a new order of legality is instituted. In the second (...) section, I argue that Derrida’s insistence on the differential relation between law and justice and on the corollary deconstructibility of the law leads to a critique of the current legal system and its axiomatics. I show that deconstruction appeals to unconditional justice in order to call for an excessive responsibility on the part of the legal system, to broaden the category of subject of law, and to have an impact on the lives of others in the margins of the established political order. (shrink)

Newton’s First Law of Motion is typically understood to govern only the motion of force-free bodies. This paper argues on textual and conceptual grounds that it is in fact a stronger, more general principle. The First Law limits the extent to which any body can change its state of motion –– even if that body is subject to impressed forces. The misunderstanding can be traced back to an error in the first English translation of Newton’s Principia, which was published (...) a few years after Newton’s death. (shrink)

Forced population migration is not a modern phenomenon. It is often an integral part of totalitarian policies and has been used repeatedly to ensure the survival of political regimes or achieve specific political ambitions. Violent migration is present practically throughout history when considering the time scope and everywhere, practically in all continents of the world, with a specter of variations depending on the context imposed by the political circumstances, we can encounter it under different names. These variations have also reflections (...) in the terminology used, among others, they are also indicators that speak of the different methods applied in order to achieve particular policies. Individuals, families, or even whole peoples are forced to migrate violently, abandon their homes and leave behind them all their lives, including the material goods created up to that moment. Seen from a normal retrospective, forced migration represents the culmination of a regime’s goals to dominate the territory without hindrance from any possible resistance. This fact has brought so many tragedies to humanity, and even worse, it has often ended with “legitimization” by international treaties or has even been the product of inter-state agreements. Forced population migration has clearly brought to the surface the evil purpose and has revealed territorial ambitions. (shrink)

Congress's national-security legislation will often require clear and specific congressional authorization before the executive can undertake certain actions. The War Powers Resolution, for example, prohibits any law from authorizing military hostilities unless it "specifically authorizes" them. And the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 required laws to amend FISA or repeal its "exclusive means" provision before they could authorize warrantless electronic surveillance. But efforts to legislate clear-statement regimes in national-security law have failed to induce compliance. The Clinton Administration inferred (...) congressional "authorization" for the 1999 Kosovo War from an appropriations statute that failed to specifically authorize the conflict. And the Bush Administration inferred congressional "authorization" for the NSA surveillance program from ambiguous language in the post-September 11th Authorization to Use Military Force. In both situations, executive-branch lawyers employed expansive theories of implied repeal and constitutional avoidance to evade the codified clear-statement requirements, and Congress and the courts acquiesced to the President's actions. Recent proposals to strengthen the clear-statement requirements in Congress's national-security framework legislation are unlikely to be effective without institutional mechanisms, such as points of order, that can deter future legislators from enacting vague or ambiguous legislation from which the executive might claim implicit congressional "authorization," and that can induce Congress to confront Presidents that act without specific congressional authorization. Simply enacting more narrow or explicit clear-statement requirements, or adding funding restrictions to Congress's framework legislation, fails to counter the aggressive interpretive doctrines that executives of both political parties have used to concoct congressional "authorization" from vague or ambiguous statutory language. (shrink)

This paper addresses the relationship between law and coercive force. It defends, against Frederick Schauer's contrary claims, the following propositions: The force of law consists in three things, not one: the imposition of duties, the use of coercion, and the exercise of social power. These are different and distinct. Even if coercion is not part of the concept of law, coercion is connected to law many important ways, and these are amply recognized in contemporary analytic jurisprudence. We cannot (...) determine how important coercion is to the efficacy of law until we know what counts as coercive force. The question of what counts as coercion is not a matter for generalization or stipulation. It requires an explanation of the concept of coercion. (shrink)

This paper commences from the critical observation that the Turing Test (TT) might not be best read as providing a definition or a genuine test of intelligence by proxy of a simulation of conversational behaviour. Firstly, the idea of a machine producing likenesses of this kind served a different purpose in Turing, namely providing a demonstrative simulation to elucidate the force and scope of his computational method, whose primary theoretical import lies within the realm of mathematics rather than cognitive (...) modelling. Secondly, it is argued that a certain bias in Turing’s computational reasoning towards formalism and methodological individualism contributed to systematically unwarranted interpretations of the role of the TT as a simulation of cognitive processes. On the basis of the conceptual distinction in biology between structural homology vs. functional analogy, a view towards alternate versions of the TT is presented that could function as investigative simulations into the emergence of communicative patterns oriented towards shared goals. Unlike the original TT, the purpose of these alternate versions would be co-ordinative rather than deceptive. On this level, genuine functional analogies between human and machine behaviour could arise in quasi-evolutionary fashion. (shrink)

Among the various proposed ultrasound laws, a few have provisions that either provide the option for the pregnant woman to hear the heartbeat or require that the heartbeat be played and merely give the woman the option to somehow avert her ears. I will argue that these heartbeat provisions actually belie the argument that these laws are intended to assist autonomous choosing. Since the information could be provided just as easily through a factual statement , it cannot be (...) justified to involve emotions in a way that the pregnant woman did not autonomously choose for herself. (shrink)

Leibniz vollbringt ein wichtiges philosophisches Manover, wenn er behauptet, daß Wunder, wenn sie auch nicht im Einklang mit den Naturgesetzen stehen, so doch im Einklang mit den allgemeineren metaphysischen Gesetzen, die Gott den Monaden in Form von Kraft eingeprägt hat. Leider hat er jedoch nie genug abgeklärt, auf welche Weise das Auftreten von Wundern mit seiner Physik der Kraft übereinstimmen kann. In verschiedenen Passagen scheint Leibniz sogar in einen Widerspruch verwickelt zu sein: wahrend er darauf besteht, daß Wunder über den (...) Naturgesetzen und der substaniellen Kraft stehen, erkennt er doch an, daß jede Substanz "n'agit que pour sa propre force et n'en reçoit jamais d'ailleurs" und daß alles, das je innerhalb einer Substanz geschehen wird, "est deja compris virtuellement dans sa nature ou notion". Wie kann ein Wunder – das per definitionem über der substantiellen Natur und Kraft steht – überhaupt vorkommen, wenn alles was mit einer Substanz geschieht, aus substantieller Natur oder Kraft folgen oder in ihr 'eingeprägt' sein muß? Um das Problem der Vereinbarkeit der Moglichkeit von Wundern und der Struktur des Leibnizschen metaphysischen Systems zu losen – und so ganz allgemein eine Annäherung zwischen Leibniz' theologischen Ansichten und seiner Metaphysik zu bewirken – rege ich an, daß wir Leibniz' Diskussion der derivativen Kraft bereichern und den Unterschied zwischen substanieller Essenz und Natur erhellen müssen. Erst wenn wir intermonadische von intramonadischer derivativer Kraft unterscheiden und substantielle Essenz mit primitiver Kraft verbinden und substantielle Natur mit intermonadischer derivativer Kraft, können wir sehen, wie Wunder über substantieller Kraft stehen können – nämlich insoweit sie über intermonadischer Kraft/substantieller Natur stehen, ohne gleichzeitig über primitiver Kraft/substantieller Essenz zu stehen. (shrink)

Armed reprisals are the limited use of military force in response to unlawful actions perpetrated against states. Historically, reprisals provided a military remedy for states that had been wronged by another state without having to resort to all-out war in order to counter or deter such wrongful actions. While reprisals are broadly believed to have been outlawed by the UN Charter, states continue to routinely undertake such self-help measures. As part of the roundtable, “The Ethics of Limited Strikes,” this (...) essay examines the doctrine of armed reprisals in light of recent instances of states using force “short of war” in this manner. We argue that the ban on reprisals has been largely ignored by states, and that recent attempts to apply the laws of armed conflict to the cyber domain are further weakening this prohibition. We conclude that this is a potentially dangerous development that lowers the bar for resorting to military force, risking escalation and thereby further destabilizing the international system. (shrink)

This book examines the success of Frederick Schauer’s efforts to reclaim force as a core element of a general concept of law by approaching the issue from different legal traditions and distinct perspectives. In discussing Schauer’s main arguments, it contributes to answering the question whether force, sanctions and coercion should be regarded as necessary elements of the concept of law, and whether legal philosophy should be concerned at all with necessary or essential properties. While it was long assumed (...) that legal norms are essentially defined by their force, it was H.L.A. Hart who raised doubts about whether law and coercion are necessarily connected, referring to the empowering, or more generally enabling, character exhibited by some legal norms. Prominent scholars following and refining Hart’s argument built an influential case for excluding force as a necessary element of the concept of law. Most recently, however, Frederick Schauer has made a strong case to reaffirm the force of law, shedding new light on this essential question. This book collects important commentaries, never before published, by prominent legal philosophers evaluating Schauer’s substantive arguments and his claims about jurisprudential methodology. (shrink)

Cross jurisdictional collaboration efforts and emergency vaccine plans that are consistent with Tribal sovereignty are essential to public health emergency preparedness. The widespread adoption of clearly written federal, state, and local vaccine plans that address fundamental assumptions in vaccine distribution to Tribal nations is imperative for future pandemic response.

This paper proposes a novel response to Nancy Cartwright’s famous argument that fundamental physical laws, such as Newton’s law of gravitation, are ceteris paribus: construing forces instrumentally allows such laws to apply generally, eliminating the need for ceteris paribus clauses. The instrumental construal of forces is motivated, and defended against prominent recent objections. Further, it is argued that such instrumentalism in no way undermines the role of force-laws in scientific practise, and indeed, is compatible with a (...) robust realism about force-laws. (shrink)

Freedom of Information Acts (FOIA) are valuable legal tools to access information held by public authorities but during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic time frames to reply to requests were de jure or de facto suspended in many countries. However, the lack of effective legal tools to achieve transparency was not automatically paired with governmental secrecy. This research paper analyses which are the factors that prompted some governments to move from secrecy to transparency while the essential legal tool (...) to achieve disclosure of information was not available. It focuses on the role of ‘ecologies of transparency’, a concept developed by Seth Kreimer to describe how FOIA needs to be understood as functioning within a collection of factors and actors. Yet, can transparency ecologies still force disclosure of information when FOIA is suspended? Research focuses on a comparative case study about transparency of scientific committees advising governments on Covid-19 in the UK and in Spain. In both countries, members and minutes were initially secret, but the British government published information before being forced by FOIA, while the Spanish executive only released partial information when FOIA was reactivated. The paper argues that information disclosure processes can be understood as supply and demand models. On the demand side, it highlights the role of adversarial press, scientific community, whistle-blowers, the opposition and critics within the governing party as decisive factors within the transparency ecology. On the supply side, it focuses on legitimation needs from the government to explain different outcomes. (shrink)

In “Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority’,” Jacques Derrida argues that the law’s authority is mystical, unattainable in its origins, theforce of law therefore precipitating conditions for its perpetual contest. The force of Derrida’s “Force of Law” is illustrated in his study of Nelson Mandela (“The Laws of Reflection: Nelson Mandela, In Admiration”). Derrida’s Mandela reflects the law’s divisibility, and therefore its iterability in representation beyond the force of its founding letter—of which apartheid (...) was an extreme example. Mandela makes visible the need for the law’s supplement, as performative justice in the face of inherent violence in the law’s conserving force. Mandela’s performativeforce of law, contesting the inaugural violence of law, is inseparable from an implicit warp and weft of historical and theological influences. (shrink)

In this paper, I will defend the thesis that fundamental natural laws are distinguished from accidental empirical generalizations neither by metaphysical necessity, 147–155, 2005, 2007) nor by contingent necessitation. The only sort of modal force that distinguishes natural laws, I will argue, arises from the peculiar physical property of mutual independence of elementary interactions exemplifying the laws. Mutual independence of elementary interactions means that their existence and their nature do not depend in any way on which (...) other interactions presently occur. It is exactly this general physical property of elementary interactions in the actual world that provides natural laws with their specific modal force and grounds the experience of nature’s ‘recalcitrance’. Thus, the modal force of natural laws is explained by contingent non-modal properties of nature. In the second part of the paper, I deal with some alleged counterexamples to my approach: constraint laws, compositional laws, symmetry principles and conservation laws. These sorts of laws turn out to be compatible with my approach: constraint laws and compositional laws do not represent the dynamics of interaction-types by themselves, but only as constitutive parts of a complete set of equations, whereas symmetry principles and conservation laws do not represent any specific dynamics, but only impose general constraints on possible interactions. (shrink)

This paper aims to explore whether there are any legal limits to the use of force, in particular when force is used for political reasons. How plausible is it to expect people to limit their options when they feel that what they’re doing paves the way towards paradise? In this light, much of the law of armed conflict would seem to be inadequate, based as much of it is on the premise that force is non-political. To the (...) extent then that limits are conceivable, these may stem from the individual morality of those engaged in battle rather than from any grand legal designs. (shrink)

In this article, the author aims to demonstrate how Agamben’s concept of Homo Sacer is ideally epitomized by a soldier in war. A soldier in war holds a peculiar position, as killing of soldiers is considered neither illegal by laws nor immoral by ethics, and so a soldier is not considered to be legally or morally “guilty” in the usual sense of the word if he or she kills another soldier in war. The author analyzes the notion of Homo (...) Sacer – a figure representing a human that can be killed without the killer being punished, but at the same time someone who cannot be sacrificed – and further demonstrates that a soldier in war can be said to hold precisely such a status. The reason why a soldier cannot be sacrificed resides in the fact that he has already been “sacrificed to war” by his own society, in exchange for the safety of all other members of society. Perceiving a soldier as Homo Sacer provides a novel explanation and an additional argument for the moral symmetry of combatants, one of the pillars of non-revisionist Just War Theory, as all soldiers can be understood as persons sacrificed by their own societies. (shrink)

The author intends to investigate the role of social distancing laws in the new normal as well as the effectiveness of forced shift to media online learning. This research indicates that student involvement had a moderating influence during the epidemic. This study is based on social learning theory, which endeavors to emulate the behavior, perceptions, and emotions of other individuals. The data were obtained from various Chinese universities. We gathered data utilizing the stratified sample approach as well as Google (...) Form. A total of 256 students enrolled in a variety of programs at Chinese universities completed a questionnaire for this investigation. The direct, mediating, and moderating effects of the variables were evaluated using partial least square structural equation modeling in this study, using the Smart-PLS software 3.0. According to the findings, forced shift to media online learning acts as a mediator between the lack of social interaction, perceived harm, perception of maintaining social distancing, and the law, and the effectiveness of media online learning has a significant effect on the effectiveness of media online learning. In addition, student engagement appears to be a moderator between the forced shift to media online learning and its effectiveness. A future study might concentrate on gaining a deeper understanding of the numerous online engagement-promoting behaviors. Teachers must go above and above to provide themes that enable pupils to connect while learning. Instructors and educational institutions will benefit from the research since it will allow them to define methods for boosting social interaction in online learning and analyze methods for enhancing the efficacy of media in online learning. (shrink)

Restatements of the law are usually considered a uniquely American phenomenon, explained by the complexities and uncertainties of a multi-jurisdictional common law system. They have also been subject to the accusation from legal realists that they are misleading, conservative and formalistic exercises. This review interrogates the role of the restatement in a jurisdiction with a singular common law tradition, focusing on Andrew Burrows’ recent Restatement of the English law of Unjust Enrichment. It compares and contrasts his restatement with previous American (...) restatements and with other types of ‘public statement’ of private Law, such as codes and legal treatises. It concludes that there may be good (and particular) reasons for restating unjust enrichment law in England and that Burrows’ work is unique in its form and purposes. This article’s central thesis is that a restatement can provide an important public platform for intellectual debate and a powerful centripetal force addressing legal fragmentation and uncertainty even in a singular common law jurisdiction. It further suggests that modernist doctrinal enterprises of this type may be more sympathetic to the critical insights of legal realism than is sometimes suggested. (shrink)

The law maintains, rather than challenges, the powers that be – or so it is commonly thought. In ‘Rackets and Spirit,’ a little known and untranslated essay, Max Horkheimer complicates this notion by attributing to law a ‘force of resistance’. He contends that, under certain conditions, the legal process develops a logic of its own, one that can become disjointed from the rationale of power. In this Critical Reflection, I look closely at the paragraph in which Horkheimer introduces the (...) notion of a ‘force of resistance’. I argue that Horkheimer develops a theme that he and Theodor W. Adorno return to in the Dialectic of Enlightenment: the spiritual instruments of domination, among them law, have the potential to turn against domination. At the same time, Horkheimer is clear that law does not resist automatically: it takes human agents to put the legal sphere into opposition to the political sphere. I illustrate this thought with respect to the recent history of federal abortion rights in the United States. (shrink)

In the TACITUS project for using commonsense knowledge in the understanding of texts about mechanical devices and their failures, we have been developing various commonsense theories that are needed to mediate between the way we talk about the behavior of such devices and causal models of their operation. Of central importance in this effort is the axiomatization of what might be called commonsense metaphysics. This includes a number of areas that figure in virtually every domain of discourse, such as granularity, (...) scales, time, space, material, physical objects, shape, causality, functionality, and force. Our effort has been to construct core theories of each of these areas, and then to define, or at least characterize, a large number of lexical items in terms provided by the core theories. In this paper we discuss our methodological principles and describe the key ideas in the various domains we are investigating. (shrink)

Readers of Plato have often neglected the Laws because of its length and density. In this set of interpretive essays, notable scholars of the Laws from the fields of classics, history, philosophy, and political science offer a collective close reading of the dialogue "book by book" and reflect on the work as a whole. In their introduction, editors Gregory Recco and Eric Sanday explore the connections among the essays and the dramatic and productive exchanges between the contributors. This (...) volume fills a major gap in studies on Plato’s dialogues by addressing the cultural and historical context of the Laws and highlighting their importance to contemporary scholarship. (shrink)