This work provides a rational framework for legislation. The unifying premise behind the essays is that, although legislation and regulation are the result of a political process, legislation and regulation can be the object of theoretical study. The volume focuses on problems that are common to most European legal systems and the approach involves applying to legislative problems the tools of legal theory - hence 'legisprudence'. Whereas traditional legal theory deals predominantly with the application of law by the judge, legisprudence enlarges the field of study so as to include the creation of law by the legislator. The original essays published in this collection expose and develop a range of new insights into the relationship between legislative problems and legal theory in a way which will engage and interest legal scholars throughout the world.

This book presents the current state of the art regarding the application of logical tools to the problems of theory and practice of lawmaking. It shows how contemporary logic may be useful in the analysis of legislation, legislative drafting and legal reasoning concerning different contexts of law making. Elaborations of the process of law making have variously emphasised its political, social or economic aspects. Yet despite strong interest in logical analyses of law, questions remains about the role of logical tools in law making. This volume attempts to bridge that gap, or at least to narrow it, drawing together some important research problems—and some possible solutions—as seen through the work of leading contemporary academics. The volume encompasses 20 chapters written by authors from 16 countries and it presents diversified views on the understanding of logic (from strict mathematical approaches to the informal, argumentative ones) and differentiated choices concerning the aspects of law making taken into account. The book presents a broad set of perspectives, insights and results into the emerging field of research devoted to the logical analysis of the area of creation of law. How does logic inform lawmaking? Are legal systems consistent and complete? How can legal rules be represented by means of formal calculi and visualization techniques? Does the structure of statutes or of legal systems resemble the structure of deductive systems? What are the logical relations between the basic concepts of jurisprudence that constitute the system of law? How are theories of legal interpretation relevant to the process of legislation? How might the statutory text be analysed by means of contemporary computer programs? These and other questions, ranging from the theoretical to the immediately practical, are addressed in this definitive collection.

Provides an in-depth study of the theory, history, practice, and interpretation of customary international law.

Today, statutes make up the bulk of the relevant law heard in federal courts and arguably represent the most important source of American law. The proper means of judicial interpretation of those statutes have been the subject of great attention and dispute over the years. This book provides new insights into the theory and practice of statutory interpretation by courts. Cross offers the first comprehensive analysis of statutory interpretation and includes extensive empirical evidence of Supreme Court practice. He offers a thorough review of the active disputes over the appropriate approaches to statutory interpretations, namely whether courts should rely exclusively on the text or also examine the legislative history. The book then considers the use of these approaches by the justices of the recent Rehnquist Court and the degree to which they were applied by the justices, either sincerely or in pursuit of an ideological agenda.

Are legislatures able to form and act on intentions? The question matters because the interpretation of statutes is often thought to centre on the intention of the legislature and because the way in which the legislature acts is relevant to the authority it does or should enjoy. Many scholars argue that legislative intent is a fiction: the legislative assembly is a large, diverse group rather than a single person and it seems a mystery how the intentions of the individual legislators might somehow add up to a coherent group intention. This book argues that in enacting a statute the well-formed legislature forms and acts on a detailed intention, which is the legislative intent. The foundation of the argument is an analysis of how the members of purposive groups act together by way of common plans, sometimes forming complex group agents. The book extends this analysis to the legislature, considering what it is to legislate and how members of the assembly cooperate to legislate. The book argues that to legislate is to choose to change the law for some reason: the well-formed legislature has the capacity to consider what should be done and to act to that end. This argument is supported by reflection on the centrality of intention to the nature of language use. The book then explains in detail how members of the assembly form and act on joint intentions, which do not reduce to the intentions of each member, before outlining some implications of this account for the practice of statutory interpretation. Developing a robust account of the nature and importance of legislative intention, the book represents a significant contribution to the literature on deliberative democracy that will be of interest to all those thinking about legal interpretation and constitutional theory.

Dispute resolution : what it's all about -- Negotiation and conflict : the big picture -- Perception, fairness, psychological traps, and emotions -- Negotiator styles -- Negotiation dance : step by step -- Gender, culture, and race -- Negotiating ethics -- The law of negotiation -- An overview of mediation : the big picture -- A deeper look into the process -- Representing clients : preparation -- Representing clients : during the process -- Specific applications -- Court-connected mediation and fairness concerns -- The law and of mediation -- Ethical issues for advocates and mediators -- Arbitration : the big picture -- Arbitration agreements -- Selecting arbitrators -- Arbitration procedures and awards -- The law of arbitration : judicial enforcement of arbitration agreements -- Judicial enforcement of arbitration awards -- Fairness in arbitration, part I : employment, consumer, and adhesion contracts -- Fairness in arbitration, part II : Recent legislative and judicial developments -- Mixing and matching the process to the dispute -- Dispute resolution design : stepped clauses and conflict management systems -- Looking ahead : opportunities and challenges in ADR and conflict management

This book intends to contribute to the consolidation of the new approach to lawmaking that has taken place in the last 20 years in legal philosophy and legal theory, spreading to other legal fields, especially criminal law. This new legislation science focusing on criminal problems has triggered a growing interest in the field, a dynamic which has led to a long-needed convergence of disciplines such as administrative law, criminal law, criminology, political science, sociology and, of course, legal philosophy to contribute to a more rational decision-making process for the construct of criminal laws. With the intention to continue on with the building of a solid “Criminal Legislation Science”, this work presents scholars, lawmakers and students various emblematic approaches to enrich the discussion about different and promising tools and theoretical frameworks.

Legisprudence considers a variety of perspectives and relies on contributions from numerous different disciplines. Rather than providing examples of the various possible approaches to legisprudential studies, this book – bringing together lawyers and legal theorists from seven different countries – highlights two aspects of the many disciplines involved. Firstly, it discusses theoretical abstraction, which borders on, or enters into the realm of full-fledged philosophical speculation. Secondly, it examines empirical observation of specific cases, precisely situated regarding their spatial or historical collocation, or referring to a particular species of legislative policy. Focusing on legislation both as a process and as a result, the aim of the book is twofold: on the one hand, it demonstrates that, far from being a purely theoretical and exclusively academic intellectual enterprise, legisprudence can offer criteria for both assessing and improving the quality of real-world legislation. On the other hand, it shows how lawmaking is at least as interesting and legitimate a field of inquiry as adjudication and interpretation of laws for legal theorists and philosophers of law, and that they are already equipped with extremely valuable intellectual tools for fruitful legisprudential inquiry. The book is organized in two parts. The first part comprises legal-theoretical accounts on general aspects of legislation as a process and as a result. The second part presents contributions focusing on specific experiences of evaluations of legislative quality and contributions to the legislature’s work on the part of the public, as well as on particular legislative policies, methodologies in lawmaking, and problems regarding legislation as an instrument.

"Proceedings of the fourth Benelux-Scandinavian Symposium on Legal Theory."--T.p.

The contemporary US legal culture is marked by ubiquitous battles among various groups attempting to seize control of the law and wield it against others in pursuit of their particular agenda. This battle takes place in administrative, legislative, and judicial arenas at both the state and federal levels. This book identifies the underlying source of these battles in the spread of the instrumental view of law - the idea that law is purely a means to an end - in a context of sharp disagreement over the social good. It traces the rise of the instrumental view of law in the course of the past two centuries, then demonstrates the pervasiveness of this view of law and its implications within the contemporary legal culture, and ends by showing the various ways in which seeing law in purely instrumental terms threatens to corrode the rule of law.