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Deborah Charles Publications
Abstracts' Library
Authors T
Klaas Tindemans, "The King's Travesty", International Journal
for the Semiotics of Law / Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique
Vol. X no.29 (1997), 115-139: Aristotle's Poetica, as a normative
account of tragedy, reveals a remarkable affinity with the process of 'juridification',
as guaranteed by legal dogmatics. This shift from tragedy to theory (philosophy)
is confronted with the political issues at stake in the hypothetical practice
of performance of Attic tragedy in the 5th century B.C., in Athens. After
a small case-study of Euripides' Bacchanals - hence the title of this paper
- the essay analyzes tragedy as a public experience: its institutional context,
the position of the players, and the gaze of the audience. Through this
analysis performed tragedy is revealed as a representational political discourse,
which problematizes the rupture between the polis (political society)
and the cult devoted to the 'real order', i.e. the world of divinities.
Aristotle's shift of paradigm provides an answer to the crisis of legitimacy
of the polis by introducing theory and dogmatics as the specific
'texture' of legal-political legitimation. In a final paragraph this theme
is exemplified with possible analogies in Shakespeare's history plays and
in the French 'tragédie classique'. e-mail: k.tindemans@kub.nl
Jarkko Tontti, "Law, Tradition and Interpretation", International
Journal for the Semiotics of Law / Revue Internationale de Sémiotique
Juridique X/31 (1998), 25-38: The paper seeks to construct answers to
the ontological and epistemological problems of legal philosophy from the
basis of continental hermeneutics as it has been developed by Martin Heidegger
and Hans-Georg Gadamer. First it is argued that the ontological status of
law is constituted by a dialectical interplay of tradition and interpretation.
The scope of hermeneutics is widened from the interpretation of legal texts
(legal sources) to the interpretation of the whole tradition of law, including
e.g. practical legal work. The tradition of law is an on-going process of
conflicting interpretations, where different interpreters (courts, the legislator,
advocates, scholars) compete to get through their views. Secondly it is
suggested that the epistemology of law must start from a reconsideration
of the Is-Ought distinction: every proposition contains, at least implicitly,
a normative demand that the claim ought to be accepted by others. A correct
proposition about law has two requirements: it must be in coherence with
the tradition and answer the present interpretative question adequately.
An adequate decision results when the tradition of law enters into a dialectical
relationship with creative and critical interpretation, which guarantees
dynamism and the change of the tradition. Tradition only gives the framework
or the context in which every interpretative question of law must be answered.
There are no non-contextual criteria to distinguish correct interpretations
from incorrect ones. e-mail: Jarkko.Tontti@Helsinki.fi
John C.W. Touchie, "Jackson on the "Decisions" Underlying
the Application of Rules", International Journal for the Semiotics
of Law / Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique Vol. X
no.30 (1997), 317-335: This paper argues that Bernard Jackson's discussion
of the application of "pure" propositional logic is fundamentally
flawed. It examines the nature of the "decisions" that Jackson
claims are a necessary concomitant of factual determinations of the predicate,
and argues that if Jackson's analysis is correct, then contrary to Jackson's
assertions, these "decisions" must also be made within the sphere
of "pure" propositional logic. It further argues that Jackson's
seemingly unobjectionable claims concerning the "decisions" that
have to be made when applying rules have substantial, but frequently
overlooked, implications for rule-based conduct governance and the
notion of following and applying a rule, one of these being that
the question of whether or not there is a "decision" to be made
in applying a rule can only be determined by turning to an examination of
its content and the environment to which it refers. Finally, a more general
argument is made against Jackson's position by relating his claims to discussions
of the philosophical notion of intentionality. The paper concludes
with the suggestion that Jackson's arguments rest on unjustifiable, though
commonly employed, assertions concerning the necessary conditions for intentionality.
Christos Tsaitouridis, "Leviathan - Moby Dick: The Physics of The
State", Law and Critique VIII/2 (1997), 223-243: This paper
attempts a comparative reading of a political treatise and a novel which
share similar textual characteristics and a "mighty theme": the
whale, Leviathan and its relationship to man. In Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan
and Herman Melville's Moby Dick the title of the book exceeds both
the more "literal" subtitle and the text; also it implies a structural
bond between the name and the body. The primacy of the body
(symbolised by the almighty Leviathan) over the soul and the spirit is the
main principle of the authors' dramatic and powerful critique of Metaphysics.
The positivities of space and the present are juxtaposed to
the eschatology of Christianity. Leviathan also subverts the traditional
hierarchy of means and ends in political theory, thus becoming the
foundation of a radical critique of representation in law. The leviathanian
legality is utterly corporeal and therefore it can be comprehended
by the axioms of what we could call Physics of the State, for which law
and force are in principle indistinguishable. Hobbes presents the law
as an order of means, an exteriority, as his insistence on the "artificiality"
of the legal order suggests.
David Turns, "Statutory Construction and "basic public policy"
in Foreign Relations: Tax Exemptions for "official agents" of
an Unrecognised State in the United Kingdom", The Liverpool Law
Review XX/2 (1998), 253-271: This article deals with the status of the
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus for certain purposes in the municipal
law of the United Kingdom. The TRNC poses considerable legal problems in
that it is an unrecognised entity in international law - such entities
have very ill-defined rights under municipal law, as demonstrated by Caglar
and Others v. HM Inspector of Taxes (1996), in which Turkish
Cypriot agents in London claimed exemption from income tax on the
grounds that they were entitled to the diplomatic immunities normally
accorded to representatives of foreign States. The particular case of Cyprus
entails complicated considerations of international treaties to which
the United Kingdom is a party in conjunction with questions of statutory
construction of British legislation. The answer to these questions is
based on considerations of public policy and foreign relations
as much as, if not more than, on considerations of law. These issues in
turn require analysis of the concepts of statehood and recognition of
States in public international law and their effect in the sphere
of municipal law and, in the specific case of Cyprus, the context of the
Turkish intervention in Cyprus in 1974 and the consequent partition of the
island. Email: turns@liverpool.ac.uk
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