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This paper is a critical analysis of a recent case decided by the Brazilian Constitutional Court, which can be considered as paradigmatic of the current approach of Brazilian case law with reference to constitutional interpretation. The case regards the unconstitutionality of a statute provision which allowed the enforcement of penalties pending a second instance appeal and therefore before res judicata. This analysis aims at discussing the concept of constitutional provisions and legal interpretation theory as well as the legal arguments applied in these cases. The approach endorsed by the Court will be argued from both a theoretical point of view and a political standpoint, in order to outline its inadequacy and conflict with the Rule of Law doctrine.

This paper is a critical analysis of a recent case decided by the Brazilian Constitutional Court, which can be considered as paradigmatic of the current approach of Brazilian case law with reference to constitutional interpretation. The case regards the unconstitutionality of a statute provision which allowed the enforcement of penalties pending a second instance appeal and therefore before res judicata. This analysis aims at discussing the concept of constitutional provisions and legal interpretation theory as well as the legal arguments applied in these cases. The approach endorsed by the Court will be argued from both a theoretical point of view and a political standpoint, in order to outline its inadequacy and conflict with the Rule of Law doctrine.

Identifying "purely" interpretative issues and activities /Bruce Anderson,Michael Shute --Beyond the four corners : the fate of formalism in contract interpretation /Seppo Sajama --The role of theory in legal theory : Weinrib's formalism and Wittgenstein /Maija Aalto-Heinilä --Interpreting defeasible principles and rules /Vojko Strahovnik --Rhetorical legal argumentation through a multimodal dimension /Marko Novak --Reinventing systematic interpretation : criteria and uses of the tripartition into public, private and social law /Ivan Padjen --Realism, truth and Meinongianism : a metaphysical conception of law and legal discourses /Federico Puppo --Are there 'non-Euclidean geometries' for judicial reasoning? : epistemological pluralism facing the crisis of legal formalism /Maurizio Manzin --Hohfeld's analytical scheme and constitutional economic and social rights /Ivana Tucak.

Rule-applying legal arguments are traditionally treated as a kind of syllogism. Such a treatment overlooks the fact that legal principles and rules are not statements which describe the world, but rather means by which humans impose structure on the world. Legal rules create legal consequences, they do not describe them. This has consequences for the logic of rule- and principle-applying arguments, the most important of which may be that such arguments are defeasible. This book offers an extensive analysis of the role of rules and principles in legal reasoning, which focuses on the close relationship between rules, principles, and reasons. Moreover, it describes a logical theory which assigns a central place to the notion of reasons for and against a conclusion, and which is especially suited to deal with rules and principles

Abstract: This paper explores the possibility of moral conflict in Kant's ethics. An analysis of the only explicit discussion of the topic in his published writings confirms that there is no room for genuine moral dilemmas. Conflict is limited to nonconclusive 'grounds' of obligation. They arise only in the sphere of ethical duty and, though defeasible, ought to be construed as the result of valid arguments an agent correctly judges to apply in the situation at hand. While it is difficult to determine in theory what makes some of them stronger than others, these 'grounds' can account for practical residue in conflict cases and for a plausible form of agent regret. The principle that 'ought implies can' survives intact.

This work explores the contribution that international law may make to the resolution of culture conflicts - political disputes between the members of different ethno-cultural groups - in democratic States. International law recognises that persons belonging to minorities have the right to enjoy their own culture and peoples have the right to self-determination without detailing how these principles are to be put into effect. The emergence of democracy as a legal obligation of States permits the international community to concern itself with both the procedure and substance of 'democratic' decisions concerning ethno-cultural groups. Democracy is not to be understood simply as majority rule. Cultural conflicts in democratic States must be resolved in a way that is either acceptable or defensible and defeasible to all citizens, including persons belonging to ethno-cultural minorities. Democracy, Minorities and International Law examines the implications of this recognition

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Original Title Page -- Original Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- 1 Introduction -- 1 Equality and Political Argument -- Untitled -- 2 Social Policy and Political Argument -- 3 Some Underlying Themes -- 2 Procedural Equality -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Equality as a Defeasible Concept -- 3 Equality and Consistency -- 3 Substantive Equality -- 1 Justice and Equality -- 2 The Contract Argument -- 3 Equality, Incentives and Efficiency -- 4 Primary Goods and Social Policy -- 1 Distributive Principles and Primary Goods -- 2 Compensation and Welfare -- 3 Equality and Transfers in Kind -- 4 Pensions and Redistribution -- 5 Need and Equality -- 1 The Concept of Need -- 2 Need and Equality -- 3 The Boundaries of Need Claims -- 4 Consent Risk and Need -- 6 Institutions (1) -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Health Care -- 3 Education -- 4 Housing -- 5 Exemption from Collectively Supplied Benefits -- 7 Institutions (2) -- 1 General Framework of Social Policy -- 2 The State and Social Policy -- 3 Social Policy and the Market -- 4 Altruism, Citizenship and Social Policy -- Notes -- Guide to Further Reading -- Bibliography -- Index.

Abstract
This article explores the domain of legal analysis and its methodologies, emphasising the significance of generalisation in legal systems. It discusses the process of generalisation in relation to legal concepts and the development of ideal concepts that form the foundation of law. The article examines the role of logical induction and its similarities with semantic generalisation, highlighting their importance in legal decision-making. It also critiques the formal-deductive approach in legal practice and advocates for more adaptable models, incorporating fuzzy logic, non-monotonic defeasible reasoning, and artificial intelligence. The potential application of neural networks, specifically deep learning algorithms, in legal theory is also discussed. The article discusses how neural networks encode legal knowledge in their synaptic connections, while the syllogistic model condenses legal information into axioms. The article also highlights how neural networks assimilate novel experiences and exhibit evolutionary progression, unlike the deductive model of law. Additionally, the article examines the historical and theoretical foundations of jurisprudence that align with the basic principles of neural networks. It delves into the statistical analysis of legal phenomena and theories that view legal development as an evolutionary process. The article then explores Friedrich Hayek's theory of law as an autonomous self-organising system and its compatibility with neural network models. It concludes by discussing the implications of Hayek's theory on the role of a lawyer and the precision of neural networks.

Under what conditions, if any, do medical professionals enjoy a right of conscience? That is, when must a just state accommodate a physician's, pharmacist's, or other medical professional's refusal to provide legally and professionally sanctioned services to which she morally objects; for example, by enacting laws that enable her to do so without fear of losing her job or her professional privileges? Recent assertions by several pharmacists of a right to conscientiously refuse to fill prescriptions for the so-called morning-after pill, and by a California fertility doctor of a right to conscientiously refuse to provide fertility treatment to a lesbian, have once again made this question a prominent topic of discussion amongst philosophers and professional ethicists. Nearly all argue (correctly, in my view) that if it entails the imposition of excessive burdens on others, then the state may justifiably refuse to recognize a professional's right of conscience. However, a number of prominent applied ethicists also endorse a second constraint on the professional's right of conscience, arguing that it extends only to certain kinds of beliefs; specifically, only those that are reasonable, or integral to the ethical practice of medicine, or not at odds with a principle of non-discrimination. This I think mistaken. As I will now demonstrate, if the fundamental moral importance of preserving an agent's integrity provides the justificatory basis for a professional's right of conscience, a position most of the authors I consider here explicitly adopt, then medical professionals enjoy a pro tanto or defeasible claim to accommodation by the state regardless of the content of the belief to which they wish to remain true.

In his work Truth and Truthfulness, Bernard Williams offers a very different interpretation of philosophical genealogy than that expounded in the secondary literature. The "Received View" of genealogy holds that it is "documentary grey": it attempts to provide historically well-supported, coherent, but defeasible explanations for the actual transformation of practices, values, and emotions in history. However, paradoxically, the standard interpretation also holds another principle. Genealogies are nevertheless polemical because they admit that any evidence that would serve to justify a genealogical account is indexical to a perspective. In short, genealogies are not true per se. This view of genealogy leaves it vulnerable to three criticisms. I call these three: (1) the reflexive, (2) the substantive, and (3) the semantic. In contrast, Williams argues that all genealogies provide a functional account for the manifestation of something and further, that a State of Nature story subtends these accounts. The upshot of Williams' approach is that it makes for strange philosophical bedfellows. For example, Nietzsche's account for the rise of Christian morality shares methodological features with Hobbes' functional explanation for the emergence of civilization and yet Nietzsche seems to take issue with genealogists who are hypothesis mongers gazing haphazardly into the blue. In the following article, I flesh out, more fully, how to make sense of Williams' novel reclassification of genealogy. I show that Nietzsche's genealogies are State of Nature stories and, just like Hobbes' State of Nature story in chapter thirteen of Leviathan, are subtended by our collective corporeality. I then demonstrate how Nietzsche's three stories in the Genealogy, when brought together, serve to undermine what Williams refers to as "… a new system (of reasons)—which very powerfully resists being understood in such terms …" Finally, I explain how my reconstruction of Williams' interpretation of the genealogy immunizes it against the three criticisms noted above.

This article is a plea for adopting a reinvigorated, analytic perspective on contemporary international law, building on MacCormick's powerful insights into law's essential structure. The article proposes that international law as whole forms an institutional normative order. The idea of institutional normative order has certain conditions. These link a normative conception of international law with the means of achieving it. The article makes three arguments on these conditions. It first argues that the function of international law is to create order in the sense of orderliness for its principal users, States and international organizations. It then claims that international law establishes normative order through international rules that are binding from the viewpoint of States and international organizations. An international process of rule-making embedded in State practice turns norms into such rules. The process is being held as a bindingness-creating mechanism because it formalizes rules through recognized means and organizes collective consent to authorize them. States and international organizations then apply these rules by exercising international legal powers under a defeasible presumption of legality. Third, the article argues that this normative order becomes institutionalized. The institutions of international law are grounded in ideas about agencies, arrangements, and master-norms that integrate the mass of international rules and principles. The article exemplifies these arguments for UN-driven international law with the relating recent jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) and Annex vii tribunals, and the Court of Justice of the European Union. The upshot of this idea of international law as institutional normative order is unity, or indeed a system. No part of international law can be seen outside of this context and hence the burden of argumentation is on those wishing to make the case for divergence.

Even though I maintain that it is a misconception to state that states are "no longer" the only actors, since they never were, indeed it makes sense to "shed light on the impact of (…) new tendencies on legal regulatory mechanisms (…)" One regulatory tendency is obviously the automation of (legal) decisions which has implications for legal orders, legal actors and legal research, not to mention legal legitimacy as well as personal autonomy and democracy. On the one hand automation may facilitate better, faster, more predictable and more coherent decisions and leave cumbersome and time consuming calculations to machines. On the other hand automation carries its problems: Firstly, the decision making may be hidden in algorithms that for most people are inaccessible and incomprehensible. This may undermine personal autonomy as we may believe that we are making genuine decisions whereas in fact a substantial part of the components of the decisions are prefabricated. With a risk of misplacing the responsibility, this may be called the "google syndrome". The hidden algorithms may also constitute the basis for decisions concerning individuals (the passive aspect), the "profiling syndrome". Based on big data machines may be able to (or are thought to be able to) make a prediction profile, leaving risks for individuals for being excluded from life and health insurances, being targets for computational policing etc. An additional dimension to the prefabricated decisions is the commercial aspect. Obviously, commercial interests are not illegitimate per se, on the contrary. The problem is the hidden dimension, the fact that commercial interests may have an influence on the algorithms in use, having implications for what is perceived as personal choices and decisions, for decisions and calculations regarding individuals, and perhaps even for decisions in relation to democracy and government. Secondly, it is questionable whether a (legal) decision is or ought to be entirely computable. The very idea of an automated decision seems to entail that the decision is made within a fixed amount of options, including clear cut categorization of facts, which seems to presume that facts come prepackaged and auto-categorizationable, and which leaves out human creativity and the occurrence of new, unforeseen situations and possibilities. Even though, at times, it may be worthwhile reducing seemingly open ended situations to closed situations with a vast, but technically manageable amount of fixed data – driving cars may be a good example – it may be counterproductive to reduce all situations to categorizationable and foreseeable ones. This automation skepticism hinges on various concepts such as 'tychism' (Peirce), 'fact skepticism' (Frank), 'defeasible logic' (Hart) and 'communicative action' (Habermas), which will be engaged in considering the possible limits to automated decision (work in progress). Presently, it may suffice to refer to Montesquieu who held that 1) judges of the lower courts ought to be nothing but inanimated beings, and 2) that the upper court ought to be able to mould the law in favor of the law, thus suggesting that automated decisions should in principle always be subject to human revision.