Law and gospel, as Luther understood them, are more a matter of modes of speech and ways of preaching than of difference in content between Old and New Testaments.

Society has historically not taken a benign view of genetic disease. The laws permitting sterilization of the mentally re tarded~ and those proscribing consanguineous marriages are but two examples. Indeed as far back as the 5th-10th centuries, B.C.E., consanguineous unions were outlawed (Leviticus XVIII, 6). Case law has traditionally tended toward the conservative. It is reactive rather than directive, exerting its influence only after an individual or group has sustained injury and brought suit. In contrast, state legislatures have not been (...) inhibited in enacting statutes. Many of their products can be characterized as hasty, unnecessary, ill-conceived, and based on the heart rather than the head. Moreover the lack of expert consultation sought has also been remarkable. One state legislature, for example, has advocated immunization for sickle cell anemia! Many others have enacted laws for the screening of inborn errors of metabolism, e.g., phenylketon uria, but have poorly defined the lines of responsibility to secure compliance. A spate of specific disease-related bills has emerged in the u.S. Congress, each seeking recognition and appropriations. Sickle cell anemia, hemophilia, Cooley's anemia and Tay-Sachs disease have been among the front-runners for support. Finally, in 1975, Congress has begun to examine an omnibus bill concerning all forms of genetic disease. The bill, termed the National Genetic Diseases Act is, however, still far from being enacted. (shrink)

ABSTRACTContemporary American policing practices are marked by increasingly top-down, racialized, militarized, and pseudo-scientific features. Social scientists have played a central role in creating this political situation: social-scientific advocates of “law and order,” far from providing a value-neutral description of social reality, appear instead to have contributed to the creation of a peculiarly modern form of power.

This book delves into Carl Schmitt's early legal works and explores their hermeneutic nature. Drawing on the insights of the giants of existential hermeneutics, such as Heidegger and Gadamer, we illuminate the essence of hermeneutic thought - the existential openness inherent in us as human beings, and then examine its implications for Carl Schmitt's early legal thought. The journey that this text embarks on reveals that the openness inherent in human beings inevitably extends to the legal phenomenon. This realisation (...) exposes two potential pitfalls or flawed appropriations within juridico-hermeneutical activity. First, there's the scientism that restricts law strictly to positive legislation, depriving it of its broader scope. Second, there's what might be called legal romanticism, in which the interpreter, on the basis of whim and subjectivity, dictates what the law means. The book delves into Schmitt's early works, highlighting his awareness of these extremes and the ways in which he addresses them. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Varieties of Law and Literature Law and Fiction Hermeneutics Law as Narrative References.

The focus of this book is on the epistemological and hermeneutic implications of data science and artificial intelligence for democracy and the Rule of Law. How do the normative effects of automated decision systems or the interventions of robotic fellow 'beings' compare to the legal effect of written and unwritten law? To investigate these questions the book brings together two disciplinary perspectives rarely combined within the framework of one volume. One starts from the perspective of 'code and law' and the (...) other develops from the domain of 'law and literature'. Integrating original analyses of relevant novels or films, the authors discuss how computational technologies challenge traditional forms of legal thought and affect the regulation of human behavior. Thus, pertinent questions are raised about the theoretical assumptions underlying both scientific and legal practice. (shrink)

Hermeneutic and anti-hermeneutic sides in the debate about psychoanalysis are entangled in an epistemological and methodological antinomy, here exemplified by Grünbaum's and Spence's paradigmatic views. Both contain a partial element of truth, which they assert dialectically one against the other (§§ 1 and 2). This antinomy disappears only by reconciling an operationalist approach with man's ability to suspend the effectiveness of the‘laws’ applied to him (§ 3). The hermeneutic way in which the technical-operational criterion of truth works in psychoanalysis demands (...) that clinical and extra-clinical testing methods work synergically, through a fruitful self-correcting strategy, grounded on the very psychoanalytic object: the unconscious (§ 4). (shrink)

This essay systematically reformulates an earlier argument about Locke and new world slavery, adding attention to Indians, natural law, and Locke's reception. Locke followed Grotian natural law in constructing a just-war theory of slavery. Unlike Grotius, though, he severely restricted the theory, making it inapplicable to America. It only fit resistance to "absolute power" in Stuart England. Locke was nonetheless an agent of British colonialism who issued instructions governing slavery. Yet they do not inform his theory--or vice versa. This creates (...) hermeneutical problems and raises charges of racism. If Locke deserves the epithet "racist," it is not for his having a racial doctrine justifying slavery. None of this makes for a flattering portrait. Locke's reputation as the champion of liberty would not survive the contradictions in which new world slavery ensnared him. Evidence for this may be found in Locke's reception, including by Southern apologists for slavery. (shrink)

This article explores the ethical consequences of the seemingly benign suggestion that the retelling of an event of state sponsored violence through the protocols of the law can provide a lesson/forum for fostering “discursive solidarity.” Focusing on the example of post‐dictatorship Argentina, the apparent pedagogical soundness of transmitting the traumatic event through legal commemoration will be complicated by considering how the law is employed as a mechanism for bracketing divisive memories and affects that interrupt the coherence of the national imaginary. (...) Underlining these issues will be a concern with the difficulty of historicizing abject affections, of interpreting and transmitting post‐traumatic rage through the intertextual web of normative allusions. The discussion grapples not only with the political/practical consequences of attempting to absorb and transmit (hermeneutically) the disavowed affects of a social traumatic event, but also speculatively gestures us to consider another sense of justice: one that provides the impetus to confront how we are obligated before that which is lost through our terms.1. (shrink)

The crux of the present paper is that Fiqh can be considered as a religious apparatus mediating between the spheres of divine addressivity and Sharia performativity. The former may manifest itself as the addressing of a spectral prophetic figure or the hidden Imām; however, the latter may emerge in the form of a responsive-performative discourse characterized paradoxically by the autonomy of ontology, heteronomy of force and pen-ultimacy of statements. By fabricating a sacred archive, establishing some hermeneutical devices (generative and interpretative), (...) and designating authentic archons, Fiqh as a mediating factor determines the ultimate form of the performative discourse of Sharia and renders the spectral addressing into a sonorous imperative tone. With regard to their various semiotic procedures, different Fiqh apparatuses, in Islamic worlds, lead to divergent and sometimes discordant binding discourses ranging from sovereign and generative Sharia laws to suspended divine rules. (shrink)

Proceedings of the First Conference of the International Society for Hermeneutics and Science.

In this article I argue that the current readings of permissive law fall into hermeneutical difficulties and do not completely explain Kant’s complex use of the concept. I argue that the shortcomings of these interpretations can only be overcome by relating permissive law to practical teleology. That teleological thinking has a role in Kant’s moral thought by way of history is not new. Here, however, I argue that the system of rights itself is in some manner teleologically situated. This interpretation (...) allows us to understand that Kant’s Doctrine of Right plays the role of a realist utopia. (shrink)

This essay systematically reformulates an earlier argument about Locke and new world slavery, adding attention to Indians, natural law, and Locke's reception. Locke followed Grotian natural law in constructing a just-war theory of slavery. Unlike Grotius, though, he severely restricted the theory, making it inapplicable to America. It only fit resistance to “absolute power” in Stuart England. Locke was nonetheless an agent of British colonialism who issued instructions governing slavery. Yet they do not inform his theory—or vice versa. This creates (...) hermeneutical problems and raises charges of racism. If Locke deserves the epithet “racist,” it is not for his having a racial doctrine justifying slavery. None of this makes for a flattering portrait. Locke's reputation as the champion of liberty would not survive the contradictions in which new world slavery ensnared him. Evidence for this may be found in Locke's reception, including by Southern apologists for slavery. (shrink)

El siguiente artículo tiene por objetivo mostrar la mutua correspondencia entre experiencia e historicidad en la obra de Hans-Georg Gadamer. La experiencia es entendida como el movimiento fundamental de la existencia histórica, la que articula las diversas esferas de la acción humana. La experiencia hermenéutica pone de manifiesto que el comprender no puede fundarse en un procedimiento metódico, sino en la forma del existir situado en el mundo. El acto hermenéutico es entendido como un continuo proceso de apropiación, que se (...) realiza mediante el lenguaje, y donde se van actualizando nuevos significados que develan el carácter aconteciente y móvil de la interpretación. Por ello, la historicidad de la comprensión será el principio hermenéutico fundamental que excluye la posibilidad de una conciencia histórica absoluta, a favor de una “conciencia de la repercusión histórica” (wirkungsgeschtliches Bewußtseins). The following article aims at showing the mutual correspondence between experience and historicity in the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Experience is understood as the fundamental movement of the historical existence, whichvarious spheres ofhuman action. The hermeneutic experience shows thatnot lie in methodical procedure, but in the way of existence in the world. The hermeneuticis understood as a continuing process that is carried out through language and where new meanings are updated, that reveal mobile characteristics of the interpretation. Therefore, the understanding the hermeneutical principle which excludes possibility ofabsolute consciousness, in favor of a historically-effected consciousness (wirkungsgeschtliches Bewußtseins). (shrink)

This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the special workshop "Truth and Objectivity in Law and Morals," held at the 26th World Congress of the IVR. The papers deal with diverse but correlated issues such as the search for truth in and through legal argumentation; the intelligible character of rules inside theories of interpretation which guarantee the coherence and the integrity of law; the role of hermeneutic analysis in the construction of the objectivity of law; the procedural and (...) contextual aspects of objectivity in legal reasoning; the role of objectivity in the distinction between the context of justification and the context of discovery; the problem about truth of normative propositions and legal statements; the incompatibility of non factualism with the traditional account of validity and legality; as well as the possibility of objectivity in morals. (shrink)

"What is a military aircraft? John Law shows in his beautiful analysis that it is a constant oscillation between multiplicity and singularity.

In its most venal manifestation, scholarly writing betrays the anxiety of influence by claiming to offer a radically new solution to age-old conundrums. The goal is to make a clean break from a traditional path of thought that has become trapped in a cul-de-sac, to make progress by finding a new way forward. Not so with Jean Porter’s work, and particularly her most recent book. Professor Porter demonstrates that thinking through an established tradition – one that has responded to numerous (...) challenges within very different contexts over several millennia – can sometimes offer the most productive response to contemporary dilemmas. She rejects the Sirens’ lure to make a sharp break from received traditions. Instead, she chooses to engage the natural law philosophy of the early Scholastic period from our contemporary perspective and its attendant problems. This provides helpful resources to deal with these contemporary dilemmas, but it also opens new possibilities for the development of natural law thinking. The resulting book, Ministers of the Law, is erudite, artfully presented, and provocative. In this article I view Professor Porter’s successful resuscitation of a plausible account of natural law through a particular lens. My thesis is that we can productively extend her work by more strongly acknowledging the hermeneutical and rhetorical nature of law. This may seem paradoxical, if not incoherent, in light of the common understanding that contemporary hermeneutical and rhetorical philosophy participates in the postmodern critique of rationality. Although many might assume that natural law is wholly at odds with hermeneutical philosophy and rhetorical theory, I argue that the case is just the opposite. Professor Porter acknowledges that rhetorical persuasion is at the center of the practices that gird the natural law tradition, but we should strengthen this acknowledgment to the point of embracing fully the theoretical commitments of contemporary hermeneutical and rhetorical theorists. My discussion is divided into three parts. First, I survey Professor Porter’s argument and establish that she regards hermeneutical and rhetorical practices as critical features of her natural law account. Next, I adumbrate a hermeneutical-rhetorical understanding of natural law that builds on my previous work. Finally, I explore how this account expands and deepens Professor Porter’s natural law account of legal authority. I conclude that we should recognize law’s hermeneutical and rhetorical nature, but that Porter has demonstrated the necessity of taking into account the Scholastics’ natural law philosophy as part of this project. (shrink)

Legal practice exemplifies the activity of hermeneutical understanding. This chapter explores the dynamic of legal interpretation by focusing on key topics in the philosophical literature. It considers Gadamer's critical distinction between a legal historian writing about a law in the past and a judge deciding a case according to the law. The chapter then reanimates the natural law tradition against the reductive characteristics of legal positivism, reconfiguring the debate by construing man's nature as hermeneutical. Finally, it describes how philosophical (...) class='Hi'>hermeneutics grounds critical legal theory rather than serving as a quiescent acceptance of the status quo, drawing from the famous exchanges between Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Habermas. These topics provide a point of entry for demonstrating the exemplary status of legal practice for hermeneutical theory. These topics provide a point of entry for demonstrating the exemplary status of legal practice for hermeneutical theory. (shrink)

Paradox and origin : on the structure of legal communication -- History, law and hermeneutic self-reference -- Self-mastery and the conversion of force : an ethics of freedom -- The social metaphysics of law : Vico's communicative body and the paradoxical grounding of freedom and authority -- The creative formation and foundation of society's law : on the nature of poetic wisdom -- Between freedom and authority : Vico's history of roman law -- The technique of command : on the (...) problem of freedom in Weber's sociology of law. (shrink)

The rule of law demands that the state's coercive power be used only according to settled general laws, applied impersonally. But an individualist theory of legal inter pretation cannot provide the shared understanding required. Gadamer appeals to the practical wisdom of judges and lawyers, who will agree on how to apply law to new cases. But this account is adequate only for very cohesive societies. Dworkin's account rests on propositional knowledge of a supposed best interpretation of an entire legal system. (...) But even if such a best interpretation is possible in theory, this possibility does not provide shared understandings in the social world. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 37, Issue 1, pp 61 - 94 Interchanges between political, juridical and theological thought in the early modern period have been studied extensively during the past decades. Less light has been cast on the corresponding interrelations between politico-juridical thought and biblical hermeneutics. However, this issue deserves some attention, too, as the following case study on Hugo Grotius wants to show by pointing to the mutual adjustment of juridical, theological and biblical arguments in the progress of the (...) core semantics of Grotius’s natural law theory from _De iure praedae_ to _De iure belli ac pacis._. (shrink)

Prvi deo ovog rada, objavljen u prethodnom broju casopisa, bio je posvecen razmatranju religijskog porekla dvojnosti 'duha' i 'slova', a zatim i pitanju njenog znacenja u kontekstu filozofije ranog nemackog idealizma. Ovaj, drugi i zakljucni deo rada usredsredjuje se na eticke implikacije tog pitanja, posto je suprotstavljanje 'duha2 Kantovog sistema njegovom 'slovu', uz cesta pozivanja na novozavetno ispunjenje mojsijevskog zakona ljubavlju i verom predstavljalo jednu od osnovnih strategija kriticara Kantove teorije morala. Krajnja konsekvenca ovog pravca kritike Kanta lezi u ukidanju (...) autoriteta transcendentne moralne norme. Ovaj korak, kojim se istovremeno ponistava autoritet teksta kao takvog, a time i stav komentara kao literarnog zanra moze se uociti vec u Hegelovim mladalackim teoloskim spisima, u kojima se zastupa ukidanje transcendencije moralnog zakona njegovim inkorporiranjem u slobodnu subjektivnost koja egzistira u zajednici verujucih hriscana. (shrink)

Since its inception, experimental social psychology has arguably been of two minds about the nature and role of theory. Contemporary social psychology's experimental approach has been strongly informed by the “nomological-deductive” approach of Carl Hempel in tandem with the “hypothetico-deducive” approach of Karl Popper. Social psychology's commitment to this hybrid model of science has produced at least two serious obstacles to more fruitful theorizing about human experience: the problem of situational specificity, and the manifest impossibility of formulating meaningful general laws (...) of human social behavior. It is argued that a social psychology based on the search for this kind of lawfulness, under the auspices of either a strict or loose interpretation of the largely Hempelian model, is ultimately unworkable. An alternative approach to social psychology that is attentive both to the need for understanding individual situations and behaviors and to the need for generalized understanding of actual human behaviors is offered. This approach is grounded in the hermeneutic tradition. (shrink)

A review of the achievements of Fr. Busa over the course of his 60 years of work in the area of computational linguistics: internal hypertexts, the systematization of allographs, lemmatization, homographs and typologies; the lexical system; the laws of economy for graphemes, for semantic typology, for heterogeneity among terms, and of the two lexical hemispheres. Finally, the project of disciplined languages is mentioned, a response to the linguistic challenge resulting from informational globalization.

With the dramatic increase in the percentage of divorces as compared with marriages, there is urgent need for the church to reflect theologically on how it cares for divorced persons.

Since its inception, experimental social psychology has arguably been of two minds about the nature and role of theory. Contemporary social psychology's experimental approach has been strongly informed by the “nomological-deductive” approach of Carl Hempel in tandem with the “hypothetico-deducive” approach of Karl Popper. Social psychology's commitment to this hybrid model of science has produced at least two serious obstacles to more fruitful theorizing about human experience: the problem of situational specificity, and the manifest impossibility of formulating meaningful general laws (...) of human social behavior. It is argued that a social psychology based on the search for this kind of lawfulness, under the auspices of either a strict or loose interpretation of the largely Hempelian model, is ultimately unworkable. An alternative approach to social psychology that is attentive both to the need for understanding individual situations and behaviors and to the need for generalized understanding of actual human behaviors is offered. This approach is grounded in the hermeneutic tradition. (shrink)

This book is a survey of how law, language and translation overlap with concepts, crimes and conflicts. It is a transdisciplinary survey exploring the dynamics of colonialism and the globalization of crime. Concepts and conflicts are used here to mean 'conflicting interpretations' engendering real conflicts. Beginning with theoretical issues and hermeneutics in chapter 2, the study moves on to definitions and applications in chapter 3, introducing cattle stealing as a comparative theme and global case study in chapter 4. Cattle (...) stealing is also known in English as 'rustling, duffing, raiding, stock theft, lifting and predatorial larceny.' Crime and punishment are differently perceived depending on cultures and legal systems: 'Captain Starlight' was a legendary 'duffer'; in India 'lifting' a sacred cow is a sacrilegious act. Following the globalization of crime, chapter 5 deals with human rights, ethnic cleansing and genocide. International treaties in translation set the scene for two world wars. Introducing 'unequal treaties' (e.g. Hong Kong), chapter 6 highlights disasters caused by treaties in translation. Cases feature American Indians (the 'trail of broken treaties'), Maoris (Treaty of Waitangi) and East Africa (Treaty of Wuchale). (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 37, Issue 1, pp 61 - 94 Interchanges between political, juridical and theological thought in the early modern period have been studied extensively during the past decades. Less light has been cast on the corresponding interrelations between politico-juridical thought and biblical hermeneutics. However, this issue deserves some attention, too, as the following case study on Hugo Grotius wants to show by pointing to the mutual adjustment of juridical, theological and biblical arguments in the progress of the (...) core semantics of Grotius’s natural law theory from _De iure praedae_ to _De iure belli ac pacis._. (shrink)

We observed that despite international declarations on child-rights, outsourced domestic girl-child labour still persists. Raising the question whether outsourced domestic girl-child labour constitutes hermeneutical injustice, we respond affirmatively. Relying on two indigenous victimology-narratives that are newspaper reports, we expose some of the horrors that the victims of outsourced domestic girl-child labour suffer. Comparing these reports with other victimology-narratives of hermeneutical injustice as reported by Miranda Fricker and Hilkje Hänel, we argue that the victims of outsourced domestic girl-child labour suffer a (...) hermeneutical gap and hermeneutical interference; and that the perpetuators of this practice, help to foster what we call ‘hermeneutical obstruction’. We recommend different counteracting measures such as: a radical feminization of educational curricula, which will allow for the introduction of the relevant hermeneutical resources that female children need in making sense of their experiences, into the classrooms and other places of learning; establishing feminist liberation agencies in all schools, religious institutions and hospitals, as ways of increasing the level of awareness about the rights of the girl-child in children and adults; feminizing legislation and legislative processes, to allow for the enactment of laws to protect the rights of the girl-child; and campaigning for a more rigorous enforcement of child-rights laws. (shrink)

Life, the universe, and everything -- Thinking robots and mysterious minds -- The good, the bad, and the ugly -- Is seeing believing?