Amalia Amaya

National Autonomous University Of Mexico
  • Virtue and objectivity in legal reasoning
    In Gonzalo Villa Rosas & Jorge Luis Fabra-Zamora (eds.), Objectivity in jurisprudence, legal interpretation and practical reasoning, Edward Elgar Publishing. 2022.
  •  5
    Law’s Judgment and Virtuous Judgement
    Problema. Anuario de Filosofía y Teoria Del Derecho 17-22. 2019.
    EspañolEl libro de Lucy conecta magistralmente las tesis jurídicas y filosóficas en discusión con un sólido conocimiento de las áreas doctrinales, mostrando cómo las reivindicaciones presentadas inciden en los problemas reales y urgentes que enfrenta la práctica jurídica. El libro también proporciona una discusión refrescantemente amplia de algunos valores jurídicos fundamentales.InglésLucy’s book stands out as an exception to this state of affairs in that it masterfully connects the legal and p…Read more
  •  16
    Reasoning in Character: Virtue, Legal Argumentation, and Judicial Ethics
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 1-20. forthcoming.
    This paper develops a virtue-account of legal reasoning which significantly differs from standard, principle-based, theories. A virtue approach to legal reasoning highlights the relevance of the particulars to sound legal decision-making, brings to light the perceptual and affective dimensions of legal judgment, and vindicates the relevance of description and specification to good legal reasoning. After examining the central features of the theory, the paper proposes a taxonomy of the main chara…Read more
  •  13
    El Derecho contra sí mismo. Un diálogo con Massimo La Torre
    with Leticia Bonifaz, Jorge Cerdio, Massimo La Torre, and Francisco M. Mora-Sifuentes
    UNIVERSITAS Revista de Filosofía Derecho y Política 34 97-130. 2020.
    La presente contribución recoge el diálogo mantenido entre distintos filósofos del Derecho a propósito de la última obra del Profesor Massimo La Torre “Il diritto contro se stesso. Saggio sul positivismo giuridico e la sua crisi”. Al hilo del trabajo del citado autor, los participantes reflexionan sobre preguntas centrales para la teoría y filosofía del Derecho contemporánea: ¿cuál es la naturaleza del Derecho? ¿es el razonamiento jurídico eminentemente moral? ¿qué lugar debe ocupar la práctica …Read more
  •  5
    In recent years coherence theories of law and adjudication have been extremely influential in legal scholarship. These theories significantly advance the case for coherentism in law. Nonetheless, there remain a number of problems in the coherence theory in law. This ambitious new work makes the first concerted attempt to develop a coherence-based theory of legal reasoning, and in so doing addresses, or at least mitigates these problems. The book is organized in three parts. The first part provid…Read more
  •  10
    Virtue and the Normativity of Law
    Ancient Philosophy Today 4 (Supplement): 111-133. 2022.
    This paper examines the normativity of law, that is, law’s capacity to guide behavior by generating reasons for action, from the perspective of virtue jurisprudence. It articulates a virtue-based model of law’s normativity according to which the law generates first order reasons for action (that is, loyalty-reasons) that need to be factored in citizens’ and legal officials’ practical reasoning, which consists, primarily, in the search for the best specification of the values involved in light of…Read more
  •  13
    Law, virtue and justice (edited book)
    with Hock Lai Ho
    Hart Publishing. 2012.
    This book explores the relevance of virtue theory to law from a variety of perspectives. The concept of virtue is central in both contemporary ethics and epistemology. In contrast, in law, there has not been a comparable trend toward explaining normativity on the model of virtue theory. In the last few years, however, there has been an increasing interest in virtue theory among legal scholars. 'Virtue jurisprudence' has emerged as a serious candidate for a theory of law and adjudication. Advocat…Read more
  •  26
    Epistemic ambivalence in law
    Philosophical Issues 31 (1): 7-23. 2021.
    Philosophical Issues, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 7-23, October 2021.
  •  21
    What is the role and value of virtue, emotion and imagination in law and legal reasoning? These new essays, by leading scholars of both law and philosophy, offer striking and exploratory answers to this neglected question. The collection takes a holistic approach, inquiring as to the connections and relations between virtue, emotion and imagination. In addition to the principal focus on adjudication, essays in the collection also engage with a variety of different legal, political and moral cont…Read more
  •  9
    Introducción
    with Raymundo Gama
    Isonomía. Revista de Teoría y Filosofía Del Derecho 40 11-15. 2014.
    En los últimos años, ha habido un creciente interés en analizar los problemas relativos a la epistemología de la prueba jurídica. En distintas culturas jurídicas, las cuestiones de prueba y razonamiento acerca de los hechos han sido abordadas desde diversas perspectivas. La cultura jurídica latinoamericana no es, en este sentido, una excepción: hay actualmente un vigoroso grupo de juristas en la región que se ha ocupado de estudiar problemas relativos a los procesos probatorios en el Derecho...
  •  16
    Coherence and Systematization in Law
    In Colin Aitken, Amalia Amaya, Kevin D. Ashley, Carla Bagnoli, Giorgio Bongiovanni, Bartosz Brożek, Cristiano Castelfranchi, Samuele Chilovi, Marcello Di Bello, Jaap Hage, Kenneth Einar Himma, Lewis A. Kornhauser, Emiliano Lorini, Fabrizio Macagno, Andrei Marmor, J. J. Moreso, Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco, Antonino Rotolo, Giovanni Sartor, Burkhard Schafer, Chiara Valentini, Bart Verheij, Douglas Walton & Wojciech Załuski (eds.), Handbook of Legal Reasoning and Argumentation, Springer Verlag. pp. 637-672. 2011.
    This chapter examines coherentist approaches to the justification of normative judgments in law. First, it provides a survey of the main approaches to normative coherence defended in the literature on legal coherentism and discusses the principal objections that threaten to undermine the coherence theory of legal justification. One problem with coherentism, namely the problem of the coherence bias, has not, however, received enough attention in the literature. This chapter states this problem in…Read more
  •  55
    Introduction to ‘Virtue and Law’ symposium
    Jurisprudence 9 (1): 1-5. 2018.
    This short piece is the introduction to the Special Issue on ‘Virtue and the Law’ published by Jurisprudence in March 2019 (vol 9, issue 1). It explains the scope of the project and its place in the unfolding of virtue jurisprudence that has occurred in the past few decades, as well as introducing the topics addressed in the volume. In the first couple of pages the authors/editors outline a very brief genealogy of virtue jurisprudence and of its relation to both legal theory and virtue theory. T…Read more
  • Law, Virtue and Justice (edited book)
    with H. H. Lai
    Hart Publishing. 2013.
  •  1
    Virtue and reason in law
    In Maksymilian Del Mar (ed.), New waves in philosophy of law, Palgrave Macmillan. 2011.
  •  70
    Virtudes, argumentación jurídica y ética judicial
    Dianoia 56 (67): 135-142. 2011.
    Según Manuel Atienza, la teoría de la argumentación jurídica se tiene que ocupar de responder tres preguntas: cómo analizar una argumentación, cómo evaluarla y cómo argumentar. Esta concepción de la teoría de la argumentación jurídica es, sin embargo, demasiado restrictiva. Además de proporcionar una respuesta adecuada a estas preguntas, una teoría de la argumentación jurídica debe ocuparse también de la cuestión de qué virtudes debe tener un juez para hacer buenas argumentaciones. La teoría de …Read more
  •  47
    The virtue of judicial humility
    Jurisprudence 9 (1): 97-107. 2018.
    This paper articulates an egalitarian conception of judicial humility and justifies its value on the grounds that it importantly advances the legal and political ideal of fraternity. This account of the content and value of the virtue of humility stands in sharp contrast with the dominant view of judicial humility as deference or judicial restraint. The paper concludes by discussing some ways in which the account of humility and of its value provided in the paper furthers our understanding of th…Read more
  •  27
    Replies to Critics
    Ratio Juris 30 (4): 529-548. 2017.
  •  126
    Legal Justification by Optimal Coherence
    Ratio Juris 24 (3): 304-329. 2011.
    This paper examines the concept of coherence and its role in legal reasoning. First, it identifies some problem areas confronting coherence theories of legal reasoning about both disputed questions of fact and disputed questions of law. Second, with a view to solving these problems, it proposes a coherence model of legal reasoning. The main tenet of this coherence model is that a belief about the law and the facts under dispute is justified if it is “optimally coherent,” that is, if it is such t…Read more
  •  212
    This paper argues for a coherentist theory of the justification of evidentiary judgments in law, according to which a hypothesis about the events being litigated is justified if and only if it is such that an epistemically responsible fact-finder might have accepted it as justified by virtue of its coherence in like circumstances. It claims that this version of coherentism has the resources to address a main problem facing coherence theories of evidence and legal proof, namely, the problem of th…Read more
  •  176
    Formal models of coherence and legal epistemology
    Artificial Intelligence and Law 15 (4): 429-447. 2007.
    This paper argues that formal models of coherence are useful for constructing a legal epistemology. Two main formal approaches to coherence are examined: coherence-based models of belief revision and the theory of coherence as constraint satisfaction. It is shown that these approaches shed light on central aspects of a coherentist legal epistemology, such as the concept of coherence, the dynamics of coherentist justification in law, and the mechanisms whereby coherence may be built in the course…Read more
  •  227
    Coherence, evidence, and legal proof
    Legal Theory 19 (1): 1-43. 2013.
    The aim of this essay is to develop a coherence theory for the justification of evidentiary judgments in law. The main claim of the coherence theory proposed in this article is that a belief about the events being litigated is justified if and only if it is a belief that an epistemically responsible fact finder might hold by virtue of its coherence in like circumstances. The article argues that this coherentist approach to evidence and legal proof has the resources to meet some of the main objec…Read more