Massimo La Torre

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 jurídica en su conceptualización? ¿qué lugar ocupa la fuerza en el Derecho?

La caída del Muro de Berlín fue saludado por muchos analistas y académicos como el inicio de una nueva era. Con el fin de la Guerra Fría se vislumbraba una nueva etapa de paz y prosperidad. Tras la “revolución liberal” algunos avistaban el “fin de la historia”. Pero tal esperanza se disipó rápidamente: la desaparición del “socialismo real” relanzó un capitalismo desenfrenado y no sólo en los países ayer bajo la órbita soviética. El ordoliberalismo entendido como el establecimiento de un modelo económico altamente competitivo y garantizado jurisdiccionalmente, se infiltró también en las instituciones europeas. La crisis del año 2010 vino a confirmar para Europa su deriva neoliberal, tecnocrática. La onda expansiva del 9 de noviembre de 1989 aún no ha concluido. Nuevas turbulencias aguardan. El Brexit también puede interpretarse en esta clave, como una empresa más de demolición, “liquidación”, “liberalización”.

ABSTRACT: After World War Two a gigantic effort was made in order to build a viable and stable international order, beginning with the Bretton Woods agreement that was aimed to stabilize the international monetary system, and with the United Nations, that were intended to restore legality in interstate affairs and somehow initiate a cosmopolitan conversation among Nation States. This order is now slowly crumbling down, paradoxically through globalization, and a triumphant neoliberalism. A new, but indeed quite old narrative, rather a myth, of what a national identity means is again getting the upper hand.KEYWORDS: international relations, international law, European Union, globalization, national identity.

Charles Dickens’ novel « Bleak House », being probably the finest among the works written by the English novelist, centers around the story of a trial. It is a case, Jarndice versus Jarndice, brought before the Court of Chancery, the « equity » jurisdiction, in the first half of the Nineteenth century, when the Chancery court distinguished itself for the dilatory and heavy procedure of it sessions. The story is a dark one, indulging in the description and comment of the ruin brought to suitors by such formalist and everlasting trial. Suitors are pushed to despair and the patrimony they are fighting for is finally consumed by the trial costs. The novel might thus be seen as an elaborate and poetic treatise on law, legal process, and the legal profession. The article intends to reconstruct the novel’s main critical arguments about law, lawyers, and the practice of court. It also tries to discuss a possible application of a minimalist philosophy of history to law. If in principle it is progress and its claim that could be considered as pragmatically inherent to legal practice, Dickens’ novel might be produced to give a pessimistic turn to this claim, and make of it a regressive incident. If law were not to satisfy the claim to progress that is performatively deducible through the claim to correctness of legal acts, the outcome would be the opposite : law would then be experienced as failure and, most intensely, despair.

My paper consists of four sections. The first is concerned with the distinction and connection between fundamental and human rights. Here I shall just introduce a few conceptual notions and definitions that are more or less widely used, but that may help us to frame the issue and better focus on the most relevant question of the foundation or justification of human rights. In the second and third sections I will present what I believe to be the four fundamental normative situations that shape our understanding and use of human rights. In the second section attention will focus on what in my opinion is the most basic of these four normative situations, which I call the “existential” situation. This is intended to offer a strong foundation for human rights as “not metaphysical,” without appealing to or relying on heavy metaphysical assumptions. I will try to stick more or less to an argumentative strategy based on common sense. The third section, dealing with the three other normative situations, will to some extent be an exercise in eclecticism, trying to combine different approaches to (and schools of thought on) the question of normativity. Here eclecticism will not be trivial, or at least I hope not. In the fourth and final section I will briefly conclude with a general overview on the issue of the “existence” of normativity and human rights.