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Week 1
Tue, 26 Apr
Morality and Private Warriors
Tony Coady
Professor of Philosophy in the University of Melbourne
From the author: 'The paper raises some questions about the moral status of mercenary warriors that is of some relevance to national and international law. It's a chapter in a book I'm writing on "Morality and Political Violence".'
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Week 2
Tue, 3 May
Justice and Multinational Federalism
Helder de Schutter
Doctoral student, Leuven
In this paper I critically examine existing normative theories of multinational federalism. I argue that many such theories succeed in demonstrating why justice requires granting national groups the right to self-government, but in the process fail to offer a normative grounding of the federal level of the multination state. Drawing on an extension of what Rawls calls "the fact of reasonable pluralism", I develop a suggestion to solve this normative lack, arguing that federalism should mainly be understood as a fair mechanism for dealing with cross-cutting and divergent identities.
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Week 3
Wed, 11 May
Multiple Principles and the Obligation to Obey the Law [download paper]
Nkiruka Ahiauzu
Lecturer in Law, Department of Law, University of Wales
George Klosko's multiple principle theory of political obligation is a most recent formulation for the existence of a general obligation to obey the law, consisting of a combination of fair play, natural duty, and the common good. In the paper we argue that the generality requirement of the obligation to obey the law has normative and factual problems of, respectively, motivation and comprehensiveness. We aim to show that whereas the multiple principle theory may solve the factual problem of the generality requirement, it does not solve its normative problem, which is a first-personal implication of the question 'why should I obey the law?'
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Week 4
Tue, 17 May
Leiter's Naturalized Jurisprudence
Hans Oberdiek
Professor of philosophy, Swarthmore College , Pennsylvania
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Week 5
Tue, 23 May
On the Old Saw, "Every reading of a text is an interpretation": Some Remarks [download paper]
and
Theory, Practice and Ubiquitous Interpretation: The Basics [download paper]
Martin Stone
Professor of Law in the Cardozo Law School , New York
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Week 6
Tue, 31 May
Dworkin and Incompletely Theorised Judgments
Emmanuel Fernando
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Philippines , and Professional Lecturer in the UP College of Law
The paper will criticize Dworkin's theory of constitutional interpretation from the perspective of exclusive legal positivism.
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Week 7
Mon, 6 Jun
General Jurisprudence [download paper]
William Twining
Emeritus Quain Professor of Jurisprudence in the Faculty of Laws, University College London
This is a draft of a paper that I am giving at a World Congress in Granada
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Week 8
Wed, 14 Jun
The Practice of Legal Validity [download paper]
Alexi Patsaouras
BPhil student, Magdalen College , Oxford
I will present a section of an M.Phil. dissertation in which I analyze Hart's practice theory of rules, and his distinction between moral and legal validity, in light of Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations and several strands in the private language argument. I will first quickly outline part of Cora Diamond's reading of Wittgenstein's attack on a truth conditional account of meaning and his attempt to get us to look at our practice of using words in order to unpack their meaning. I will then build on Joseph Raz's theory of authority in order to lay the groundwork for an attempt to flesh out the concept of legal validity, and its connection to moral reasons for action, through a study of the practice of applying that concept.
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