Jacques Derrida: Law as Absolute Hospitalityãeepresents a comprehensive account and understanding of Derridaâe(tm)s approach to law and justice. Through a detailed reading of Derridaâe(tm)s texts, Jacques de Ville contends that it is only by way of Derrida's deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence, and specifically in relation to the texts of Husserl, Levinas, Freud and Heidegger - that the reasoning behind his elusive works on law and justice can be grasped. Through detailed readings of texts such as To speculate (...) âe" on Freud, Adieu, Declarations of Independence, Before the Law, Cogito and the history of madness, Given Time, Force of Law and Specters of Marx, De Ville contends that there is a continuity in Derridaâe(tm)s thinking, and rejects the idea of an âe~ethical turnâe(tm). Derrida is shown to be neither a postmodernist nor a political liberal, but a radical revolutionary. De Ville also controversially contends that justice in Derridaâe(tm)s thinking must be radically distinguished from Levinasâe(tm)s reflections on âe~the otherâe(tm). It is the notion of absolute hospitality - which Derrida derives from Levinas, but radically transforms - that provides the basis of this argument. Justice must on De Villeâe(tm)s reading be understood in terms of a demand of absolute hospitality which is imposed on both the individual and the collective subject. A much needed account of Derrida's influential approach to law,ãeeJacques Derrida: Law as Absolute Hospitalityãeewill be an invaluable resource for those with an interest in legal theory, and for those with an interest in the ethics and politics of deconstruction. (shrink)

In the summer of 1998, the Wisconsin State legislature amended its child protection laws. Under new child abuse provisions, Wisconsin judges can confine pregnant women who abuse alcohol or drugs for the duration of their pregnancies. South Dakota enacted similar legislation almost simultaneously. The South Dakota statute requires mandatory drug and alcohol treatment for pregnant women who abuse those substances and classifies such activity as child abuse. In addition, the South Dakota legislation gives relatives the power to commit pregnant women (...) involuntarily for two days; a court order can place the pregnant women in custody for up to nine months. These recent legislative “successes” follow scores of failed attempts by legislators in other states to establish fetal protection laws aimed at women who use and abuse drugs and alcohol during pregnancy. (shrink)

The dramatic appearance of managed care organizations (MCOs) on the U.S. health scene has generated tremendous anxiety among health care providers and patients. These fears are based on the belief that managed care techniques pose greater risks of under treatment than do fee-for-service modes of payment. In addition, many physicians and patients resent the limits placed on clinical autonomy by the MCO model and the stresses that it places on the traditional physician-patient relationship. These misgivings have been exacerbated by the (...) mostly negative response to MCOs in the media and academia. Legislatures have responded to these claims and public fears with a wave of regulatory initiatives. Some of these regulations are attempts to protect patients. Others, however, are motivated primarily by antipathy toward the concept of managed care itself. This essay is an attempt to develop a social ethic of regulation and argues that the sole reason that private enterprise may be justifiably limited is when it presents a risk of harm to others or society. While some regulation and proposed regulation of MCOs meet this standard, much legislation represents an unjustified attempt to limit or handicap otherwise legal behavior merely because a segment of the population and medical profession find it aesthetically unpleasing and oppose its approach to the delivery of health services. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt sees the 1933 Nazi seizure of power as a revolution that inaugurates an entirely new era of political-legal order. Analyzing Schmitt’s rarer Nazi-texts, diaries, and correspondence, I argue that from 1933 to 1936 Schmitt attempts to theorize the Nazi revolution by developing an entirely new political language of Nazism, cleansed from non-German ways of thinking, especially nineteenth-century liberalism. I focus on three conceptual transformations through which Schmitt understands the remaking of the German state: The shift from the liberal (...) democratic neutral state to a new one-party state or a Führer-state dominated by a movement – a shift symbolized by the “death of Hegel”; the transformation of sovereign power into Führertum, represented by the symbolical deaths of Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes, whose thought cannot comprehend the totality of the Nazi movement, and the perversion of the liberal-democratic equality before the law to the völkisch equality of the race as the basis of all Nazi political–legal life. Criticizing previous interpretations of Schmitt’s Nazi thinking, I demonstrate that when Schmitt abandons his own decicionist thought in favor of concrete order thinking in 1933/1934 the idea of race becomes the basis of his political–legal thought. (shrink)

Kant’s 1795 essay on perpetual peace has been lauded as one of his most important and influential political texts as well as one of the most important texts on peace. Kant’s text was largely forgotten until the 1980s and 1990s, with numerous commentaries appearing around the time of its 200 years existence. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida’s interest in Kant’s text appears to have arisen around the same time, and his analyses of this text continued after the turn of the (...) century. The references to Kant’s essay in Derrida’s texts appear mostly in the context of a discussion of the concept of hospitality. The latter concept is understood by Derrida as including both a demand for absolute hospitality, that is, hospitality without the imposition of any limitations, as well as a demand, in the interests of survival, for such limitations or conditions. A negotiation between these dimensions of hospitality is ultimately required. The aim of this article is to elucidate Derrida’s analysis of Kant’s essay, specifically his recasting of the concept of peace as absolute hospitality, as well as to briefly outline its implications for international and cosmopolitan law. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article offers a new reading of Carl Schmitt and his Nazi engagement by chronologically examining the changing uses of Roman law in his Weimar and Nazi thought. I argue that Schmitt’s different ways of narrating the modern reception of Roman law disclose, first, the Nazification of his thought in the spring of 1933, and second, the partial and apologetic de-Nazification of his thinking in the 1940s. While Schmitt’s Weimar-era works are defined by a positive use of Roman imagery, (...) ranging from Schmitt’s support to the Catholic Church to his endorsement of Benito Mussolini’s ‘total state’ in Italy, Schmitt’s Nazi writings from 1933 to 1936 describe the reception of Roman law as an anti-German virus that must be overcome by the Nazi movement. This shift mirrors Schmitt’s transformation from an authoritarian thinker sympathetic to Italian Fascism into a devoted Nazi. However, once Schmitt begins to see that Germany will lose World War II, he recalibrates his position. While Schmitt’s earlier Nazi writings offered a negative estimation of the historical school of Friedrich Carl von Savigny, in his 1943/44 book on European legal science, Schmitt portrays Savigny as the paradigmatic European, whose work opens the path for a renewed legal science. (shrink)

New data-driven ideas of healthcare have increased pressures to reform existing data infrastructures. This article explores the role of data governing institutions during a reform of both secondary health data infrastructure and related legislation in Finland. The analysis elaborates on recent conceptual work on data journeys and data frictions, connecting them to institutional and regulatory issues. The study employs an interpretative approach, using interview and document data. The results show the stark contrast between the goals of open and Big Data (...) inspired reforms and the existing institutional realities. The multiple tensions that emerged during the process indicate how data frictions emanate to the institutional level, and how mundane data practices and institutional dynamics are intertwined. The article argues that in the Finnish case, public institutions acted as sage-guards of public interest, preventing more controversial parts from passing. Finally, it argues that initiating regulatory and infrastructural reforms simultaneously was beneficial for solving the tensions of the initiative and analysing either side separately would have produced misleading accounts of the overall initiative. The results highlight the benefits of analysing institutional dynamics and data practices as connected issues. (shrink)

Since the establishment of the first food bank in 1995, charitable food aid has become entrenched in Finland as a seemingly irreplaceable solution to food poverty. Further, it has recently been suggested that the focus of food aid activities is shifting from food poverty and temporary hunger alleviation towards environmental sustainability through addressing food waste via organized re-distribution of expiring food from retail to charitable organizations. This potentially creates a mechanism that solidifies food poverty and fortifies the paradoxical situation where (...) charitable organizations delivering food aid are dependent on food waste rather than trying to reduce it. To understand the process that has led to this shift, a longitudinal media data analysis on the evolution of the discussion and the interpretations on CFA is presented. By conducting an inductive frame analysis, the paper answers three key questions: How was CFA framed by and through the media in Finland between 1995 and 2016? Has any single frame dominated the discussion at any given point? Finally, what are the characteristics of the frame that focuses on food surplus redistribution? The results suggest that when the practices are framed as potential receivers and redistributors of surplus, perception of CFA is mainly favourable and the root causes for food insecurity are not addressed. Thus, by focusing on environmental sustainability, food aid practices—hitherto depoliticized as a poverty problem—have gained policy relevance in the discursive space of the circular economy; perhaps at the cost of poverty policy and with unintended consequences. (shrink)

This article introduces a rhetorical theory of narrative in reading Kierkegaard, comparing Kierkegaard’s praxis to Phelan’s definition of “somebody telling somebody else that something happened on some occasion and for some purpose(s).” Use of pseudonyms problematizes “the somebody” telling and makes apparent the differing purposes of author and narrator. In the early authorship, the purpose is usually a life-view. The “something happened” may seem irrelevant in Kierkegaard, but it evokes questions of lived experience and life-view. The “occasion” for telling is (...) textually mediated, and thus draws a novel connection to literary history. Finally, I examine Kierkegaard’s real and authorial readers. (shrink)

There has been little theoretical debate of why companies behave in socially responsible ways whilst descriptive analysis of corporate social responsibility is flourishing. As result, there have been few methodological debates on how to study both what responsible actions are and why companies act accordingly. This methodological and theoretical essay discusses how institutional social theory has been and could be used in explaining socially responsible corporate behaviour. It is explored what kinds of theoretical tools are needed in explaining this behaviour (...) and how various tools can be integrated into one model explaining socially responsible corporate actions. It is argued that researchers should empirically focus simultaneously on normative origins and institutional environments of responsibilities, on power relations determining the particular responsibilities, and on institutional arrangement of corporate actions. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been recently conceptualized and studied as a political phenomenon. Most debates in this scholarship have thus far focused on normative issues. Less attention has been paid to the explanatory potential of CSR research grounded in political theory and philosophy. In this article, we conduct a pragmatist reading of political scholarship on CSR and seek to deploy existing knowledge for research pursuing political explanation. We argue that the political ontologies that underlie scholarship on CSR can be (...) used to transform normative and descriptive research also for explanatory uses. We show how ontologies vary in terms of potential research objects and scopes of political explanation, and argue that the main types of political-ontological stances adopted in scholarship on CSR, foundational and post-foundational stances, offer explanatory analysis of different schematic guidelines. Our pragmatist reading of previous research and an empirical case illustration of political explanation of change in corporate responsibility in the biofuel industry demonstrate the opportunities, limitations, and challenges different political-ontological commitments provide for political explanation. (shrink)

This essay argues that Carl Schmitt’s postwar writings offer an original critique of biotechnology and utopian thinking. Examining the classics of utopian literature from Plato to Thomas More and Aldous Huxley, Schmitt illustrates the rise of utopianism that aims to transform human nature and even produce an artificial “human-machine.” Schmitt discovers a counterimage to the emerging era of biotechnology from a katechontic form of Christianity and maintains that human beings must recognize their shared humanity in God, warning us that without (...) a realm of transcendence, the enemy no longer offers an existential mirror but begins to incarnate foreign values, which must be destroyed completely. By comparing Schmitt with Michel Foucault and Donna Haraway, it is also argued that Schmitt’s thinking unlocks a novel path to exploring the meaning and histories of biopolitics and posthumanism. From a Schmittian perspective, Foucault’s depiction of biopolitics appears as a mere prelude to the coming age of biotechnology that will lead us into a posthuman era. Demonstrating interesting contrasts with Haraway’s utopian vision of the cyborg, it is maintained that Schmitt’s thinking offers a distinctively conservative-Christian critique of posthumanism. (shrink)

Investigates, by way of Derrida's engagements with Kant, how the foundations of modern constitutionalism can be differently conceived to address some of the challenges of the twenty-first century.

The role of governments in business and society research has remained underexplored, and recent studies have called for further investigations of mechanisms of government intervention. In response to this call, this article studies how nation branding communication can govern businesses toward sustainability by providing qualifications for sustainable business, legitimizing these qualifications, and attaching national aspirations to business conduct that meets these qualifications. A comparative exploratory analysis of the nation branding materials of Denmark and Finland shows that while the two nations (...) qualify business sustainability in similar ways, differences exist in the legitimization of business sustainability and the national aspirations attached to sustainable business conduct. Both countries emphasize principles of efficiency and renewability in their sustainability qualifications. However, while Finland clearly seeks to attract firms to the local business environment to increase exports and improve the local economy, Denmark ascribes more heterogeneous value to sustainable business. (shrink)

This article explores the writings of Hugo Grotius on the law of civil war. First, the article takes a look at what Grotius wrote about the Dutch revolt, the civil war during which he himself lived and which he helped to legitimise. Second, the article notes how in legal practice the Dutch revolt also provided a valuable early precedent for the later scholars of the law of civil war, who were more concerned with questions of revolutionary prize jurisdiction and the (...) problem of recognition. Third, the article explores the elements relating to these questions of civil war in Grotius’s volitional law of nations as presented in De iure belli ac pacis. These provided Grotius’s most enduring legacy for the later scholars on the law of civil war. (shrink)

Derrida’s recently published Life Death seminars have again highlighted the importance of values within the ongoing philosophical conversation about overcoming metaphysics. The seminars further indirectly raise a matter of great importance for constitutional theory. Values have become central to constitutional discourse since the mid-twentieth century despite critique due to their supposedly subjective nature, the potential conflict between them, and the legal uncertainty that they bring about. This essay enquires into the origin, logic, structure, and operation of (constitutional) values. It does (...) so through a close reading of the texts of Heidegger and Derrida in which Nietzsche’s call for a revaluation of values takes on a central role, along with a reflection on the relation between life and Being, as well as between life and death. A close reading of these texts in turn makes possible an unorthodox reading of Schmitt’s newly translated text on constitutional values in The Tyranny of Values, which finally opens the possibility of a move beyond such values and thus beyond metaphysics. (shrink)

I will argue that Mill used the concepts tendency and intention as technical terms a proper understanding of which is vital in interpreting his moral philosophy. I examine two interpretations of tendency, offered by Brian Cupples and Fred Berger, and proceed to show weaknesses in both. I will also sketch an interpretation of my own in which tendencies have an important place in Mill's understanding of not only science but moral philosophy as well. I will then show how my interpretation (...) of tendency can help in understanding Mill's foreseeable consequences utilitarianism that relies heavily on Mill's unorthodox use of the notion of intention. (shrink)

The concept of the political -- Constituent power -- Identity and representation -- The concept of the constitution -- Human rights -- State, Grossraum, nomos.

In the summer of 1998, the Wisconsin State legislature amended its child protection laws. Under new child abuse provisions, Wisconsin judges can confine pregnant women who abuse alcohol or drugs for the duration of their pregnancies. South Dakota enacted similar legislation almost simultaneously. The South Dakota statute requires mandatory drug and alcohol treatment for pregnant women who abuse those substances and classifies such activity as child abuse. In addition, the South Dakota legislation gives relatives the power to commit pregnant women (...) involuntarily for two days; a court order can place the pregnant women in custody for up to nine months. These recent legislative “successes” follow scores of failed attempts by legislators in other states to establish fetal protection laws aimed at women who use and abuse drugs and alcohol during pregnancy. (shrink)

One of the paradoxes of the free software ideology is its reliance on the legal institutions it was created to object to. One could argue that Free Software Foundation is using copyright to enforce their free software licenses as aggressively as the Business Software Alliance is enforcing its clients’ copyrights. We will show that the reality is more complex and that there is a significant difference: the free software community uses primarily non-legal enforcement methods and trusts on social norms. We (...) argue that free software could be used as a tool to make copyright more accepted in the less developed world because of its positive connection with copyright and community based approach. We explain why strong copyright is also in the interest of free software developers. The article concludes by suggesting that World Intellectual Property Organization should include free software into its development agenda. (shrink)

En 2015, le Premier ministre finlandais commandait une étude préliminaire sur l’introduction d’un revenu de base. Cet article présente ses résultats provisoires. Il analyse les diverses options envisagées, les implications de l’introduction d’un revenu de base quant aux incitations ou désincitations à prendre un emploi, ainsi que les reconfigurations plus lointaines qu’une telle introduction entrainerait dans le fonctionnement des allocations sociales.

This essay shows how Derrida, in a variety of texts, engages directly or indirectly with the Kantian moral law, which rests on the assumption of man's autonomy vis-à-vis his natural inclinations. In the background of this analysis is Derrida's engagement with Freud, the latter having argued that the Kantian moral law is located in, and can be equated with, the superego. Derrida challenges Freud's assignation of the moral law (solely) to the superego, and suggests that what appears to Kant as (...) the moral law and to Freud as the demands of the superego, already involve a limitation of a much more radical demand on the self: that of absolute sacrifice, and which one can understand with reference to Freud's death drive. This demand can be referred to as the law of law, that is, the law which makes of the moral law a law. Within this broader framework, the essay explores in detail Derrida's reading of Kant's notion of respect that is owed to the moral law, the notion of duty, and the formulation of the categorical imperative by Kant in terms of an ‘as if’. (shrink)

This article addresses the boundaries of law and historiography in scrutinizing some rarely analyzed aspects of the works of Reinhart Koselleck. The article studies the significance of the tradition of ‘politico-juridical’ concepts in Koselleck’s thought, by tracing the intellectual history and biographies of some notable legal historians that for the large part defined the legal historical discourse after the Second World War. It is argued that a research of the connections between Koselleck and these legal historians provides an insight into (...) the themes of the temporality of law and the universality of legal concepts in Koselleck’s articles. In contextualizing the thinking and texts of Reinhart Koselleck, this article benefits from previously unused primary sources and illuminates the reference group and intellectual atmosphere in which Koselleck worked in and around 1968. (shrink)

Environmental problems are a legion, and of radically differing kinds. Yet the notion of a unified environmental crisis persists. Such unification has a solid basis, firstly because all areas of the world are interwoven into a global system of extraction, production, trade and consumption. Secondly, diverse environmental problems interact in many ways. However, too often this slips into problematic totalization, ignoring the important local socio-ecological specificities. The search for environmental master metrics, the attempt to find common units of measurement for (...) diverse environmental impacts, is a consequential example of this. A path must be found between problematic master metrics that lack contextual understanding and can lead to perverse outcomes, and addressing environmental problems in a piecemeal fashion that overlooks a systemic view. One set of tools can never suffice when we are dealing with the complex and multifarious field of environmental issues. (shrink)

In light of the new developments in biotechnologies in recent years and their potentialities for human enhancement, the traditional division between conservative and progressive thinking has acquired new nuances. This article offers a historical examination of bioconservatism—the specific kind of conservatism that has developed in response to these technologies, the aim of which is to resist their potential future adverse effects. I differentiate between two types of bioconservatism: the one based on a defense of the anthropological openness of human beings (...) and the conditions that make ethical existence possible (Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas), and the other based on a more traditionally conservative defense of human nature (Francis Fukuyama). By proposing a more concise definition of bioconservatism, this article deepens our understanding of the new conservative responses to the accelerating rate of biotechnological developments and the rise of the intellectual movements of transhumanism and posthumanism. (shrink)

The European Union Commission’s whitepaper on Artificial Intelligence proposes shaping the emerging AI market so that it better reflects common European values. It is a master plan that builds upon the EU AI High-Level Expert Group guidelines. This article reviews the masterplan, from a culture cycle perspective, to reflect on its potential clashes with current societal, technical, and methodological constraints. We identify two main obstacles in the implementation of this plan: the lack of a coherent EU vision to drive future (...) decision-making processes at state and local levels and the lack of methods to support a sustainable diffusion of AI in our society. The lack of a coherent vision stems from not considering societal differences across the EU member states. We suggest that these differences may lead to a fractured market and an AI crisis in which different members of the EU will adopt nation-centric strategies to exploit AI, thus preventing the development of a frictionless market as envisaged by the EU. Moreover, the Commission aims at changing the AI development culture proposing a human-centred and safety-first perspective that is not supported by methodological advancements, thus taking the risks of unforeseen social and societal impacts of AI. We discuss potential societal, technical, and methodological gaps that should be filled to avoid the risks of developing AI systems at the expense of society. Our analysis results in the recommendation that the EU regulators and policymakers consider how to complement the EC programme with rules and compensatory mechanisms to avoid market fragmentation due to local and global ambitions. Moreover, regulators should go beyond the human-centred approach establishing a research agenda seeking answers to the technical and methodological open questions regarding the development and assessment of human-AI co-action aiming for a sustainable AI diffusion in the society. (shrink)

On March 9, 1993, in the first ruling of its kind, the Maryland Court of Appeals declared that physicians and hospitals may be sued for failing to inform patients of a practitioner’s human immunodeficiency virus status. What is more significant, these suits may be pursued even in instances when the physician has followed universal precautions and the patient did not contract the virus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. The Maryland court addressed two central questions in Faya v. Almaraz. First, do (...) HIV-infected physicians have a legal duty to inform their patients of their HIV status? And, second, can patients recover damages for fear induced by a physician’s conduct? While one finds numerous precedents that authorize actions to recover damages based purely on fear of disease and emotional distress, the Faya court’s holdings on the issue significantly expand the scope of potential liability. Moreover, the court’s analysis of the informed consent and HIV-infected physician issue is incomplete, inconsistent, and represents an unjustified and unwise departure from traditional informed consent theory. It, and its progeny, may have widespread and dire repercussions. (shrink)

In this article the author explores Jacques Derrida’s reading in The Purveyor of Truth of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Purloined Letter. In his essay, Derrida proposes a reading which differs markedly from the interpretation proposed by Lacan in his Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter’. To appreciate Derrida’s reading, which is not hermeneutic-semantic in nature like that of Lacan, it is necessary to look at the relation of Derrida’s essay to his other texts on psychoanalysis, more specifically insofar as the Freudian (...) death drive is concerned. The present article explores this ‘notion’ as elaborated on by Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle as well as Derrida’s reading of this text. It also investigates the importance of the ‘notion’ of the death drive as well as the significance of Derrida’s reading of The Purloined Letter for constitutional interpretation. (shrink)

During the publication process of above mentioned article the Notes to Figures 1, 2, 3, and 4 were erroneously deleted from the figure legends. The correct versions are given below.