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Constantin M.Stamatis, Argumenter en droit Une théorie critique de 1' argumentation juridique, éditions Publisud, Paris, 1995, pages 336. (author's abstract)

The book pleads for a critical and pragmatic theory of legal argumentation, in the age of advanced modernity. What is at stake is the best possible justification of legal judgements, operated either by state organs or by whoever means to participate in the juridical discursivity, in the framework of a democratic public sphere. The book scrutinizes debates within contemporary western legal philosophy over the following topics: nature and justness of legal judgements, langage of law, legal syllogism, interpretation of rules and general principles, rationality of the legal argumentation, jurisprudential production of norms.

The book seeks to provide a comprehensive outlook of current legal philosophy, capable of coming to grips with wider and explosive problems of humanity, in a critical spirit. The pivotal working hypothesis of the book argues that the problem of justness of legal judgements is inextricably related, in the last instance, with the question of the legitimacy of the established legal order. And the legitimation of a legal and political system is gauged, in the first instance, by its quality to assimilate postulates of substantive justice. Postulates of this kind revolve around the supreme value of equal freedom for all persons, personal and collective autonomy, in its formal and material normative connotations.

The theory defended here purports to be both critical and pragmatic. A critical theory of legal argumentation is consigned to ferret out in the existing legal orders those normative constellations or regulations that prop up relations of inequality and unfreedom, relations of restricted equality and freedom. In this guise, any authentic theory of legal argumentation necessarily amounts to a theory of justice. A pragmatic theory of legal argumentation, on the other hand, is meant as a complexe reflection on both the semantic research into the rules and the general principles to be applied on every occasion, and the pragmatic concretisation of these rules and principles in respect to the normative meanderings of the case under dispute.

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