Adam Dyrda

What is the ethics of belief in the context of social and legal institutions about? In this chapter, after briefly introducing the ethics of belief (a part of traditional, as opposed to naturalized, epistemology), we discuss the object of such ethics: beliefs and belief-related attitudes. We recognize that W. K. Clifford's idea of the ethics of belief is related to society's basic self-understanding (as it facilitates public reasoning). We note that while explaining grounds for the ethics of belief, Clifford makes socio-ontological claims (‘tribal self’). Then we focus on the ethics of the beliefs and attitudes that ground social and legal institutions (as these foundational institutional beliefs and attitudes, including mutual trust, are referred to by social ontologists). We briefly investigate related themes in works by J. Searle, R. Tuomela, and D. Lewis and his followers, although evidence is surprisingly scarce. At the end, we raise four problems that should be analyzed further: the detachment problem, the anatomism problem, the question of evaluation, and the theory-ladenness of evaluated belief structures.

Adopting an evolutionary perspective, this Research Handbook presents novel and cutting-edge insights into the interdisciplinary field of legal evolution. Engaging with various scientific approaches, it provides a versatile analysis of legal evolution, examining the field as a whole as well as in the context of specific branches of law. Featuring meritorious contributions from eminent scholars, the Research Handbook navigates the two different yet interconnected currents of legal evolution. Chapters first offer a reflective study of the history of legal systems, concepts and doctrines which sets out the regularities, mechanisms, and patterns in the process of transformations that such systems, concepts and doctrines undergo. It moves on to explore various legal problems through the prism of evolutionary anthropology which rests on the assumption that evolutionary biology and psychology provide valuable insights into human nature. Both stimulating and authoritative, the Research Handbook on Legal Evolution is an indispensable read for researchers, academics and students in law, legal philosophy and theory, and political philosophy.

Celem artykułu jest analiza etycznej wersji ewidencjalizmu XIX-wiecznego matematyka i filozofa W.K. Clifforda i obrona go przed zarzutami formułowanymi przez pragmatystów. Znana teza Clifforda brzmi: „Zawsze, wszędzie i bez względu na osobę niesłusznie jest żywić przekonania oparte na niedostatecznym świadectwie”. Argumentacja Clifforda na rzecz tej tezy, wpisująca się zasadniczo w XIX-wieczny program pozytywistycznej epistemologii, świadomie uwzględniała elementy pragmatyczne, wykluczające jej przesadnie radykalne odczytanie i krytykę. Okazuje się też, że współczesne koncepcje pragmatyczne właściwie wspierają normatywne intuicje, kryjące się za programem „etyki przekonań”, zaproponowanym przez Clifforda prawie 150 lat temu. Te ostatnie obejmują twierdzenie o normatywnych-etycznych podstawach epistemologii.

The term ratio legis is an important term of legal practice. Thus, reflection over the general conceptual content of ratio legis may be a window through which practitioners could see the relevance of philosophizing about terms and arguments applied generally in legal practice. However, the primary question with regard to ratio legis is not conceptual but existential: is there any real ratio legis that can be discovered and described? The positive answer opens the door for further investigation over the term’s real conceptual content. I will argue, however, that the answer to this question cannot be positive and every qualification of something as the “law’s reason” is a creative activity. If it is so, then every instance of such a labeling is in need of further justification. The example of ratio legis shows that legal theorizing is profoundly a normative study of how we should, rather than of how we do, use legal terms.

This paper discusses the “positivistic” idea of the limits of law in various contexts: the conceptual problem of the “limits of law”, the limits of legal interpretation and the limits of theoretical disagreements in jurisprudence. In the latter case, we briefly show how contemporary “reflective” or “critical” positivist theories approach the possibility and limits of disagreements over the “grounds” of law. In what follows, we argue that these theories, which argue for a form of an “institutional” limit for admissible “legal” reasons as built upon theories of basic concepts or normative theories of interpretation, are themselves actually underdetermined by “legal culture” or, so to speak, a “folk theory of law”. In the final section, we outline how a folk theory of law constrains both conceptual and interpretive enterprises in jurisprudence.

This paper aims to inquire whether an analysis of the concept of law is an exercise of analysis in its modest or immodest form. Our inquiry suggests that the Jacksonian distinction between modest and immodest conceptual analysis, so eagerly applied by many legal scholars, is inapplicable to analyzing a specific part of the concept of law. The crux of our argument lies in the relation between the folk theory of law and the content of the developed concept of law. As an artifact concept, the concept of law must depend on the pre-existing content of the folk conception of law (which we term the ‘foundational folk theory’). This part of folk theory determines the collective intentionality necessary to bring an institutional artifact, such as law, into existence. A large part of the argument for this conclusion depends on the acceptance of a realist and functional, post-Searlean theory of artifactual types.

The paper critically examines the conception of majoritarian democracy. In the second part of the text, the author introduces the definition of majoritarian democracy based on the Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of minimal democracy. The thesis of the paper is that electing the government by universal suffrage is neither necessary nor sufficient as a condition for a democratic regime. The concept of democracy is broader, including the catalogue of democratic values connected with the concept of democratic citizenship, special circumstances of political action and the limitation of government powers.

Methodological and metaphilosophical disputes in the contemporary philosophy of law are very vivid. Basic issues remain controversial. The purpose of the book is to confront approaches of Anglo-Saxon and continental philosophy of law to the following topics: the purpose of legal philosophy, the role of disagreement in legal philosophy, methodology of legal philosophy (conceptual analysis) and normativity of law. We see those areas of legal metaphilosophy as drawing recently more and more attention in the literature. The authors of particular chapters are internationally recognised scholars rooted in various traditions: Anglo-Saxon (Gerald Postema, Dennis Patterson, Kenneth Ehrenberg, Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco); Southern-European (Riccardo Guastini, Manuel Atienza); Nordic (Torben Spaak); German (Ralf Poscher); and Central-European (Jan Wolenski, Tomasz Gizbert-Studnicki, Adam Dyrda). They represent different approaches and different backgrounds. The purpose of the volume is to contribute to the cross-cultural discussions of fundamental issues of philosophy of law.

American legal realism is commonly treated as a theory-pariah. The article exposes certain reasons explaining such a treatment. Generally, it seems that such an attitude is a result of many misunderstandings of realist aims and ambitions, some of which pertain to the theoretical status of legal realism and its relation to so called general jurisprudential theories, such as legal positivism. In the first part of the article I explain generally what these aims were and how one should see these relations. In the second part I briefly analyze B. Leiter’s famous claim that legal realism is conceptually dependent on hard legal positivism (as a general theory of law). The critique of this claim opens the possibility for some alternative understanding of legal realism.