Peter Langford

The work of Paul Ricœur is animated by an insistent philosophical engagement with the position and orientation of human existence. An integral aspect of Ricœur’s philosophical engagement concerns the relationship between individual existence, as a question of personal identity, and co-existence, as a question of social life. This engagement is shaped by a reflexive interpretation—a hermeneutics—of these aspects of human existence in a manner that has been termed a ‘hermeneutics of the human condition’. The presence of law within the framework of this reflexive interpretation arises through the question of justice, which situates law in relation to both personal identity and human coexistence. The passage from the individual to human co-existence becomes that of the interconnection between responsibility and justice. In this manner, law becomes a domain or region of reflection in and through its connection to morality, ethics, and politics. Law is a distinct, but neither self-contained nor self-sufficient, domain whose distinctiveness is to be considered through its interconnection with these other domains. The position accorded to law is thus the expression of a wider, reflexive reconfiguration of the interrelationship of all these domains. The reconfiguration results from an overarching process of reflexive interpretation that involves the selection of, and interpretative orientation to, the texts which form the material or corpus for this overarching process. It is in this selection and interpretation that the distinctive character of Ricœurian hermeneutics is elaborated, the question of justice raised, and the domain of law accorded its particular position. This initial framework provides the basis and initial orientation for the more specific pathways which the contributions to this special issue trace and develop. These pathways, in their distinct recourse to the corpus of Ricœur’s work, demonstrate the continued pertinence and relevance of its philosophical framework of critical inquiry.

Two studies of the categorization of justifications for the morality of the actions of others are reported. Justifications were categorized using a scoring scheme not previously reported. Results showed that a reasonable degree of inter‐rater reliability could be achieved and that developmental trends detected were robust with respect both to interviewers and interview content, although interview content had an expected and comprehensible effect on the frequency of items within content categories. Results were interpreted within the context of a model of the development of moral reasoning that emphasizes the influence of the social focus of the interviewee and the process by which individuation occurs towards either a secular or a religious view of morality. The notion that a more differentiated individuation may also occur within each of these categories was explored, as were, shifts from paternalism to autonomous decision‐making in thinking about some areas of social life.

Two studies are reported using written question sheets to assess attitudes to and moral reasoning about class rules among a total of 117 senior secondary school students and 87 trainee teachers. The studies confirmed the prediction of the multidimensional control model of the development of moral reasoning of Langford (1991a, b; 1992a, b) that the moral reasoning of such students about this topic is much more mature than predicted by Kohlbergian theory, their most important source of information for making moral decisions in this area being the general welfare of students and teachers. Other detailed predictions of the multidimensional control model were also, in the main, verified. It was found that, although the great majority of senior secondary students thought we ought to have those class rules that are necessary to protect the right of others to learn, there exist a small minority whose main aim is revenge upon schools and teachers and a rather larger minority who are not even prepared to uphold such rules in theory when it comes to classes in which they are not interested. It was concluded that while it is possible to reach agreement with the great majority of students of this age about rules to protect the learning of others, sanctions are needed to back class rules opposed by a minority even in theory.

Four studies are reported using both a questionnaire and an interview focussed on the questionnaire items to assess the development of moral autonomy in a total of 720 respondents from 12 to 21 years of age. The studies were intended to extend the analysis of the development of moral autonomy offered by an existing multidimensional model of the development of moral reasoning. Results showed the need to add a dimension of individual differences to the single dimension currently used to describe autonomy‐related developmental changes in the content of judgements. A further dimension, indexing individual differences in use of justification types was also identified. It was found that justifications for moral judgements were more theoretical than in a Kohlberg‐style interview. A content‐related categorisation of justifications revealed a substantial connection between justification and judgement content.

The article traces the distinctive genesis and development of law and rights in the work of Paul Ricœur. The distinctiveness of the Ricœurian approach rests upon a process of hermeneutical enquiry which insists upon the connection of law and rights with ethics and morality. The manner in which this relationship is determined renders Ricœur’s analysis equally distinctive as it is elaborated beyond the confines of legal positivism and the modern natural law tradition. Ricœur’s conceptualisation situates law and rights within the complex intersection of morality, law and politics. The article analyses the stages of Ricœur’s hermeneutical inquiry commencing from his critical engagement Greimasian semiotics of narrative which results in a textual hermeneutics. This textual hermeneutics is the preparatory stage for renewed reflection upon narrative in the sixth study of Oneself as Another in which the relationship between narrative and ethics is emphasised. The interconnection between narrative and ethics facilitates the transition to the 'petite éthique' of Oneself as Another where, in studies seven to nine, a moral judgment is situation is elaborated. The conclusion of the 'petite éthique' indicates, through the brief discussion of rights and imputation, the relationship to the domain of law and rights. These indications prefigure the later concentrated analysis of law and rights in which Ricœur elaborates the position of law and rights in their complex interconnection with the ethico-moral background of the 'petite éthique' and politics.

The Kelsenian project of a legal science of positive law remains, as demonstrated by the majority of contributions to this volume, a source of continued relevance for contemporary legal theory. In the subsequent development of legal theories of positive law, the Kelsenian project has, however, effectively ceased to be accorded a significant degree of pertinence. The loss of pertinence is marked by the marginalization of the methodological questions and framework of the Kelsenian project and the shift in orientation to other theoretical forms of conceptualization of positive law. The effective jettisoning of the Kelsenian project, predicated upon a transformation in the understanding of the purpose of a theory of positive law, has itself resulted in a significant differentiation and disagreement concerning the foundation for, and parameters of, a legal theory of positive law. This differentiation and disagreement has centred, in contemporary Anglo-American work in particular, upon the question of the degree to which the legal theory of positive law excludes or includes morality (see, for example, Gardner 2001; Kramer 2003; Himma 2001, 2002, 2005; Marmor 2001, 2002, 2007; Raz 1975, 1979, 2011; Shaprio 2009; Waluchow 1994) and upon the wider question of the theoretical or methodological basis for the elaboration of a legal theory of positive law (see, for example, Coleman 2001; Leiter 2007; Shapiro 2013).

Kelsenian legal science is a distinctive theoretical project for the comprehension of positive law. It distinguishes itself from the broader, nineteenth century German tradition of legal science through a process of critical interpretation and reworking. The process, initiated with Kelsen’s habilitation of 1911, Hauptprobleme der Staatsrechtslehre entwickelt aus der Lehre vom Rechtssatze (Kelsen 2008), represents a reconsideration of the fundamental elements of this tradition which preserves the methodological requirement for a theory of law to be a science. The adoption of this interpretative position entails that the Kelsenian project assumes both the continued pertinence of a notion of legal science and the historical legitimacy of the tradition of legal science in relation to preceding conceptions of a theory of law. The tradition of legal science is held, in the 1911 habilitation, to denote the origin from which further work on a theory of law is to develop.

This chapter considers the Aristotelian examination of slavery in Book I of the Politics in order to question the relationship between slavery and the wider Aristotelian framework of law, reason and emotion. A detailed analysis of Book 1 reveals that it is orientated by an appropriation and transformation of the Platonic conception of virtue and rulership. The Aristotelian response defines the slave as the particular determination of the connection between nature and necessity which, in turn, shape the notions of law, reason and emotion. The relationship between the slave and notions of law, reason and emotion are conferred after the initial determination of, and justification for, the division between (natural) master and (natural) slave. The division is a form of rulership within the household. The slave’s subjection to the master determines that the relationship to law, reason and emotion is coextensive with household management. It is only the free population and, in particular, free men, who are capable of developing a political regime. The political regime is the sole form through which the relationship between law, reason and emotion is to be established in order to realize the ideal or good life. The further development of the Politics is predicated upon the simultaneous recognition and disappearance of a relationship of subjection.

This book critically examines the conception of legal science and the nature of law developed by Hans Kelsen. It provides a single, dedicated space for a range of established European scholars to engage with the influential work of this Austrian jurist, legal philosopher, and political philosopher. The introduction provides a thematization of the Kelsenian notion of law as a legal science. Divided into six parts, the chapter contributions feature distinct levels of analysis. Overall, the structure of the book provides a sustained reflection upon central aspects of Kelsenian legal science and the nature of law. Parts one and two examine the validity of the project of Kelsenian legal science with particular reference to the social fact thesis, the notion of a science of positive law and the specifically Kelsenian concept of the basic norm. The next three parts engage in a critical analysis of the relationship of Kelsenian legal science to constitutionalism, practical reason, and human rights. The last part involves an examination of the continued pertinence of Kelsenian legal science as a theory of the nature of law with a particular focus upon contemporary non-positivist theories of law. The conclusion discusses the increasing distance of contemporary theories of legal positivism from a Kelsenian notion of legal science in its consideration of the nature of law.

Roberto Esposito: Law, Community and the Political provides an introduction to this increasingly influentialItalian theorist'sreconceptualisation ofthe relationship between law and community. Focusing primarily on Esposito's worksCatgories de l'Impolitique, Communitas and Bos, andBiopolitics and Philosophy, his work, it is argued, is animated by an abiding concern with the question of the political as that which remains unthought in the tradition of modern and contemporary political philosophy. Esposito's fundamental rethinking of the notion of community thereby breaks with the existing framework of political and legal philosophy; critiquing its traditions and, in the process, rethinking the very form of critique. As the first monograph length study of Esposito in English, Roberto Esposito: Law, Community and the Politicalwill be of considerable interest to those with interests in contemporarylegal, political and philosophical thought.

This article compares and contrasts Hans Kelsen's concept of normative imputation, in the Lecture Course of 1926, with the concepts of peripheral and central imputation, in The Pure Theory of Law of 1934. In this process, a wider and more significant distinction is revealed within the development of Hans Kelsen's theory of positive law. This distinction represents a shift in Kelsen's philosophical allegiance from the Neo-Kantianism of Windelband to that of Cohen. This, in turn, reflects a broader disengagement of The Pure Theory of Law from the more direct connection with a political project of a civitas maxima envisaged by the Lecture Course

The article considers that the relationship between the work of the Neo-Kantian philosopher, Hermann Cohen, and the legal theorist, Hans Kelsen has been shaped by a tendency to detach, and render relatively unthematized, the question of the cosmopolitan orientation of their work. The reintroduction of the question of cosmopolitanism enables the relationship between the theoretical projects of Cohen and Kelsen to be reconsidered in which Kelsen’s development of a pure theory of law contains a sustained critique of the ‘dogma of the state’, which has as its necessary corollary a theory of legal monism. These elements are, in turn, the articulation of the potential for an international juridical order, in its primacy over states, to encompass the possibility for world peace. The revelation of the cosmopolitan orientation of Kelsen’s pure theory of law then offers the capacity to reconfigure the relationship to Cohen on the basis of the question of cosmopolitanism. In this reconfiguration, the characterization of their relationship becomes that of identity and difference: a shared cosmopolitanism combined with a divergent articulation of its theoretical foundation and development

Hans Kelsen and Max Weber are conventionally understood as the original proponents of two distinct and opposed processes of concept formation generating two separate and contrasting theoretical frameworks for the study of law. _The Reconstruction of the Juridico-Political: Affinity and Divergence in Hans Kelsen and Max Weber__ _contests the conventional understanding of the theoretical relationship between Kelsen’s legal positivism and Weber’s sociology of law. Utilising the conceptual frame of the juridico-political, the contributors to this interdisciplinary volume analyse central points of affinity and divergence in the work of these two influential figures. Thus, the chapters collected in _The Reconstruction of the Juridico-Political _offer a comprehensive reconsideration of these affinities and divergences, through a comparison of their respective reconstruction of the notions of democracy, the State, legal rights and the character of law. From this reconsideration a more complex understanding of their theoretical relationship emerges combined with a renewed emphasis upon the continued contemporary relevance of the work of Kelsen and Weber.

Hans Kelsen and Max Weber are conventionally understood as initiators not only of two distinct and opposing processes of concept formation, but also of two discrete and contrasting theoretical frameworks for the study of law. _The Foundation of the Juridical-Political: Concept Formation in Hans Kelsen and Max Weber _places the conventional understanding of the theoretical relationship between the work of Kelsen and Weber into question. Focusing on the theoretical foundations of Kelsen’s legal positivism and Weber’s sociology of law, and guided by the conceptual frame of the juridico-political, the contributors to this interdisciplinary volume explore convergences and divergences in the approach and stance of Kelsen and Weber to law, the State, political science, modernity, legal rationality, legal theory, sociology of law, authority, legitimacy and legality. The chapters comprising _The Foundation of the Juridical-Political _uncover complexities within as well as between the theoretical and methodological principles of Kelsen and Weber and, thereby, challenge the enduring division between legal positivism and the sociology of law in contemporary discourse.