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Deborah Charles Publications
Abstracts' Library
Authors K
Jari Kauppinen, "Law Without Place: Topology and Decision. Questions
of Line and Literature", Law and Critique IX/2 (1998), 225-248:
The article deals with the question of decidability and undecidability
(of law or text in Jacques Derrida's Force of Law) in a topological
context. The topology is here thought more as a futural event's taking place;
instead of temporality, time of decision, the ethical (ethos means
a place, dwelling) is connected to a topos or utopos. There is the
atopical level (of law) that keeps the decision open although in (the procedural
level, for example) one must always make decisions. Therefore law's place
is atopological, it is without a place - we could neither decide
the law nor know its place.
The question of decision, line and place is read through different texts
by Derrida, Carl Schmitt and Paul Celan. Finally, the democracy
to come in Derrida's recent theory is connected to Maurice Blanchot's notion
of literary space (The Space of Literature). Also the Politics
of Friendship (Derrida) is discussed in relation to the question of
friend, enemy and the becoming of a community.
The decision here means also a meridian (in Schmitt, Nomos
der Erde and Celan, Der Meridian) that decides the law and the
line (Heidegger, The Question of Being) in a metaphysical topology.
The decision must be without a ground; it is the impossibility of a decision
that means re-searching for a place, a line that decides between tropo-topological
and the turning between poles. If the place of undecidability is atopological
it refers to the place of becoming, like the becoming of literature (Blanchot)
and of democracy (Derrida, Specters of Marx).
In Force of Law the law is undecidable and that is also in relation
to law's force - the force is thought in relation to the truth (aletheia)
and force as physis and therefore the "force" behind the
law could be physis as aletheia as Heidegger proposes.
Valerie Kerruish, "Persons and Available Identities: Gender in
Hegel's Philosophy of Law", Law and Critique Vol.VII no.2 [1996],
153-172: The paper begins from three images of women in Hegel's philosophy
of law. The first two images occur within Hegel's phenomenology of the emergence
of the concept of legal personality. The third is located in his logical
(re)construction of the idea of right and is a gender identity of women
in modernity. It is argued that these representations of women and men are
integral to Hegel's legal and ethical theory. They have continuing relevance
as identities occupying a logical space between the fully determined particularity
of the person and fully abstract universality of the legal person. While
the content of such identities changes, their form and function within the
closed dialectic of normative thought continues to be a significant aspect
of the legal reproduction of social relations.
HHJ Michael Kershaw, "From Beeching to Woolf", The Liverpool
Law Review xix/1 (1997), 47-51: This paper argues that the Woolf reforms
are part of single process which started a quarter of a century ago and
that the Judicature Acts 1873 and 1875 were the beginning of a similar long
process of reform in the latter part of the last century. It shows that
one of the reforms of the last century has been re-used (the Commercial
Court and mercantile lists) and that another (licensed conveyancers) has
been reversed in a way which suggests that the present era of reform may
not be over for the legal profession.
Roberta Kevelson, "Tom Paine's RIGHTS OF MAN: An Aestheic-Anarchic
Dimension of Legal Semiotic", International Journal for the Semiotics
of Law III/8 (1990), 169-186. Click here
for extended abstract.
Roberta Kevelson, "Dissent and the Anarchic in Legal Counter Culture:
A Peircean Viewpoint", paper delivered at IASL Conference, Såo
Paolo, August 1997: The idea of "dissent" in the history of United
States law and society has evolved from its first meaning as a privilege
to contest official powers to the people's obligation to challenge the status
quo, i.e, the powers of State. This shift from privilege granted to the
People to an obligation assumed by the People places a creative force in
acts that oppose established, mainstream law. Dissent, regarded here as
counter-culturist activity, is dialogic and represents, from a Peicean viewpoint,
the role of artist-as-outsider in relation to established law and society.
Some parallel modes of dissent, e.g., in art, will be mentioned. This paper
explores the semiotic relation between legal counter-culture and normative
law.
Roberta Kevelson, "Discussion on J. Touchie's Response to B. Jackson's
'MacCormick on Logical Justification in Easy Cases: A Semiotic Critique'",
International Journal for the Semiotics of Law / Revue Internationale
de Sémiotique Juridique Vol. XI no.31 (1998), 67-71: The title
tells the story of this paper. Here Kevelson contributes a Peircean point
of view, especially on points which touch upon the Peircean understanding
of the roles of different kinds of reasoning in different kinds of discourses.
The focus here is on the interplay of reasoning types in the general concept
of legal reasoning. E.g., the symbolic form of the syllogism, it is pointed
out, has become a rhetorical device which persuades that it is truth-bearing.
Additional commentary discusses Kevelson's agreement with both Touchie and
MacCormick, in opposition to Jackson, but for different reasons than they
each offer. e-mail: bobbieke@earthlink.net
Andy Khan, Professor of Law, Athabasca University, Canada, "Canadian
Education: Legal Position of Religion", in "Education Law",
Liverpool Law Review XX/1 (1998), 137-156: This article examines
the legal position of education and religion, as impacted upon by
the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Charter provides
for certain fundamental rights, including equality rights and freedom of
religion and conscience, and imposes constitutional limitations on the Canadian
parliament, provincial legislative assemblies and government. The Canadian
Charter is having a considerable impact on educational practices and policies,
particularly relating to religion. The developments have seen two major
streams of litigation. In the first, the courts have been asked to
rule whether the state can impose religious practices of the majority on
a minority in schools, in other words does the Charter illegalize religious
indoctrination in public schools? The second stream is the question of public
funding of private religious schools. e-mail: andyk@athabscau.ca
Elizabeth Kingdom, "Transforming Rights:
Feminist Political Heuristics", Res Publica Vol.II no. 1, (1996),
63-75: The phrase "transforming rights" refers to: (a) the processes
whereby the specification of rights in formal declarations such as the European
Social Charter can initiate a legal "career" with results which
go against women's interests, leading to disillusion with rights as incorporated
into constitutional politics; (b) the grounds, exemplified by radical feminism,
debates around the class politics of new social movements, and communitarian
theory, for hostility to the claim that appealing to rights can contribute
to the transformation of society; (c) strategies for the transformation
of rights. Despite reservations about the efficacy of rights discourse for
feminist and progressive legal politics, the reconceptualisation of "women's
rights" as "feminist political heuristics" is proposed. Rights
are seen as heuristics, in the sense that they provide guidelines or directives
for developing research programmes. In this way, the appeal to rights is
no longer the statement of a moral imperative but a mechanism for initiating
the processes leading to the formulation of feminist policy objectives or
draft legislation. This proposal is exemplified by an analysis of the conflict
between conceptualising women's rights to social benefits on an employment
model and conceptualising them on a welfare model.
Author's address: Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work
Studies, University of Liverpool, Eleanor Rathbone Building, Bedford Street
North, Liverpool L69 7Z, e-mail: Kingdom@liverpool.ac.uk
Elizabeth Kingdom, "Right without might: liberal
minority politics", Res Publica 3/l (1997), 115-119: Can liberals
justify minority rights and retain their traditional commitment to human
rights and individual rights? Will Kymlicka argues that a liberal commitment
to freedom of choice and to personal autonomy demands a concern with cultural
membership and requires the promotion of minority rights. His criticism
of traditional doctrines of human rights is not that they provide the wrong
answers relating to questions concerning cultural minorities but that they
provide no answers at all. But communitarians, feminists and Marxists have
made precisely that cridcism of all rights claims, and their critique can
just as easily - and in logic has to be - applied to Kymlicka's own doctrine
of minority rights. e-mail: Kingdom@liverpool.ac.uk
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