Continental Traditions in Jurisprudence

Zielgruppe / Audience

Studierende des Schwerpunktbereichs 1a; students from a non-German legal-cultural background.

Inhalt / Content

In these lectures we will give a first grounding in the history of the continental European tradition of legal philosophy as distinct from, but connected to, Anglo-Scandinavian thinkers. We will try to make the case for continental traditions and show that they follow significantly different strategies than those employed in the common law world. The focus of these lectures will, however, not be on recreating the past, but on discussing current problems (as they can be framed by traditional approaches). We will look at specific topics and work out, together with the participants, how the efforts and failures of important legal thinkers may help us in better understanding some recurrent problems of legal theory and law. First, we will provide a grounding in the continental debates on traditional questions of jurisprudence by trying to chart some of the historical discursive options, e.g. in the confront of the following themes:

• the role of morals and/or justice in law
• the question of authority
• the possibility of an ultimate foundation of law
• the viability of legal scholarship (so called legal science)

Second, however, we will focus on the idea of a structural analysis of legal orders, as the more recent continental debate has shown more fruitful results in the daily application of theory to actual problems of the law, like:

• conflicts of norms
• legal errors
• legal gaps
• legal interpretation and decision-making
• structures of the legal process
• connections between “material” and “procedural” law

By engaging in discussion with traditional ways of understanding legal phenomena in their context and in their relation to concrete problems of law, participants should be enabled to start seeing the structural problems of legal theory and argue their theoretical case, rather than learn a series of facts about past legal philosophers. Participants will be encouraged to analyze the theoretical dimensions of seemingly simple legal problems. The chosen approach will emphasize the connections between the so called material and procedural law, in order to unveil the law as a continuous, complex process that re-reads reality and schematizes its own interpretations about it in a particular structured way.

Weitere Informationen / Further information

• Hier geht es zur Veranstaltung in HISinOne / The lecture in HISinOne

Sprechstunde / Guidance

Nach Vereinbarung / By appointment

Kontakt / Contact

Rodrigo Cadore

* Hinweis / Observation: There are two further sessions to be (re)scheduled during the semester.