06 October 2011

NOTICE: Morigiwa, Stolleis, and Halperin on the Interpretation of Law in the Age of Enlightenment

I’ve just become aware of the release (by Springer) of a very interesting text by Yasutomo Morigiwa, Michael Stolleis, and Jean-Louis Halperin (eds), Interpretation of Law in the Age of Enlightenment: From the Rule of the King to the Rule of Law (2011):


This book examines the actual practice of the interpretation of law in the Age of Enlightenment versus the ideology of the Age and explains the reason for and difference between the two. The ideology of the Age of Enlightenment was that law, i.e., the will of the sovereign, can be explicitly and appropriately stated, thus making interpretation redundant. However, the reality was that in the 18th century, there was no one leading source of national law that would be the object of interpretation. Instead, there was a plurality of sources of law: the Roman Law, local customary law, and the royal ordinance. Yet, in deciding a case in a court of law, the law must speak with one voice, making interpretation to unify the norms inevitable. This book discusses the process involved and the role played by justification in terms of reason - the hallmark of Enlightenment.

The table of contents includes:

Editors’ Preface; Morigiwa Yasutomo, Michael Stolleis, Jean-Louis Halpérin.- Foreword from the Herstec Project; Sato Shoichi.- About the Contributors.- I. Introduction.- Judicial Interpretation in Transition from the Ancien Régime to Constitutionalism; Michael Stolleis.- II. The case of France.- Legal Interpretation in France under the Reign of Louis XVI through the Gazette des Tribunaux; Jean-Louis Halpérin.- Legal Interpretation through the Case Law Book of the Parlement de Flandre; Serge Dauchy.- II. The case of Germany.- The Object of Interpretation: Legislation and Competing Normative Sources of Law in Europe during the 16th to 18th Centuries; Heinz Mohnhaupt.- The Concept and Means of Legal Interpretation in the 18th Century; Jan Schröder.- Necessity: Pandectists between Norm and Reality (1780-1870); Hans-Peter Haferkamp.- IV. The Nature of Legal Interpretation.- Interpretation by Another Name; Morigiwa Yasutomo.- What is Interpretation of the Law for the French Judge? Michel Troper.- The Craft of Interpretation ; Bradley Wendel.- Concluding Remarks.- Legal Interpretation in 18th Century Europe: Doctrinal Debates versus Political Change ; Jean-Louis Halpérin.- Index.

REMINDER: The Concept of 'Law' in Context Conference

REMINDER REMINDER REMINDER

 
Our conference on 'The concept of "law" in context: comparative law, legal philosophy, and the social sciences' will be held from 21-22 October 2011 at the Swiss Institute of Comparative law (SICL) in Lausanne:

The coexistence of the laws of the state and other normative orders, in the Western past and the global present, is a challenge to both modern legal philosophy and comparative law. The continuing importance of non-state norms, trans-national and sub-national, undermines the state-centred focus of much contemporary jurisprudence. It also problematises the neat division of complex and dynamic legal traditions into discrete families of closed legal systems.

Speakers include plenary speaker Werner Menski (SOAS, University of London) and Marc Amstutz (University of Fribourg), Gerhard Anders (University of Zürich and Edinburgh), Mauro Bussani (University of Trieste and the International Association of Legal Science), Seán Patrick Donlan (University of Limerick), Baudouin Dupret (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France), Julia Eckert (University of Berne), Andrew Halpin (Swansea University), Lukas Heckendorn Urscheler (Swiss Institute of Comparative Law), Alessio Lo Giudice (University of Catania), Salvatore Mancuso (University of Macao), Emmanuel Melissaris (London School of Economics), Alexander Morawa (University of Lucerne), David Nelken (University of Cardiff and Macerata), and Mark van Hoecke (University of Ghent)

For addition information, please contact Lukas Heckendorn Urscheler at info@isdc.ch or +41 21 692 49 11. A registration form is available at http://www.isdc.ch/.


Finally, note that our project on Legal Philosophy in Context will also be discussed on Friday, 21 October 2011. For additional information, please contact Seán Patrick Donlan at sean.donlan@ul.ie.

Additional information will be provided shortly about a meeting of our members.