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Law’s Cultural Project and the Claim to Universality or the Equivocalities of a Familiar Debate

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Abstract

Do our present circumstances allow us to defend a specific connection (that specific connection) between «legal rules», «moral claims» and «democratic principles» which we may say is granted by an unproblematic presupposition of universality or by an «acultural» experience of modernity? In order to discuss this question, this paper invokes the challenge-visée of a plausible reinvention of Law’s autonomous project (a reinvention which may be capable of critically re-thinking and re-experiencing Law’s constitutive cultural-civilizational originarium in a «limit-situation» such as our own). The discussion is developed by recognising that the claim to universality is not only incompatible with a substantive conception of juridicalness as validity but also sustained with difficulty by a procedural representation of discourse and rationality (a representation which, against its own conclusion-claims, could also be said to be culturally and civilizationally bounded). Not forgetting some specific features of contemporary juridical pluralism—namely that which emerges from the counterpoint between semiotic groups or interpretative communities (and their differently assumed claims of intersemioticity concerning the signifier law)—this train of reflection diagnoses briefly a sequence of complementary main difficulties (as «obstacles» to recognising Law’s demand as an unmistakable cultural project), namely those arising from the formalistic normativistic inheritance (confounding legal autonomy with isolationism), from the challenges and seductions of practical holism (justifying a continuum in which Law’s project loses its sense and autonomy), and also from the familiar debate between exclusive and inclusive versions of positivism and non-positivism (a debate which establishes-consecrates an equivocal counterpoint between Law and Morality).

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Notes

  1. So that we may distinguish two versions of positivism (exclusive and inclusive) and three versions of non-positivism (exclusive, super-inclusive, inclusive) [3, pp. 267–270].

  2. As we know, the importance of distinguishing between the analytical and the normative group of arguments (both including empirical arguments) to reconstruct the controversy of legal positivism is mainly developed in [2], passim. We shall use mainly the latest version of this text, which appeared as [4] (not only a translation by Bonnie and Stanley Paulson, but also a new version, with several detailed alterations proposed by Alexy himself), pp. 20 ff. («Critique of Positivistic Concepts of Law»).

  3. If not explicitly to the «idea of correct morality as justified morality» [4, pp. 80–81].

  4. «As the claim to objectivity (…) and truth (…), the claim to correctness is addressed to all» and «this is true without qualification as far as universal morality is concerned» [3 , p. 261 and note 17].

  5. An answer capable of entering into a certain «debate surrounding the concept of law», just as it exemplarily solves its controversies [4 , p. 5].

  6. I’ll use here some general formulations by Charles Taylor [35].

  7. «Constitutional review claims to be closer than the parliament to the ideal dimension of law…» [3, p. 272].

  8. I’m naturally invoking the main topics of our Poznan’s meeting.

  9. This dominant methodic paradigm is evidently the one that 19th Century’s normativistic formalism (and rule conceptualism) has been able to construct : a conception of law and legal thought we could identify (in its spectrum of institutionalizing possibilities) invoking (as exemplary reflexive synthetesis) Jhering’s «Theorie der juristischen Technik» and Langdell’s «system of classification».

  10. To say it respectively with Bernard Jackson and Stanley Fish.

  11. «Law is better regarded as a servant of social need, a conception that severs the law from any inherent dependence on its past…» [32, p. 159].

  12. Those leading hetero-references become explicit in academic and social movements such as Law and Economics, Feminist Jurisprudence(s), Critical Race Theory and other narrative critical jurisprudences, law as musical and dramatic performance, law and culture (without forgetting some trends in Law and Literature scholarship).

  13. This return will privilege however, certainly not by chance, some of Habermas’ well-known formulations.

  14. These formulations are used by Habermas in his answers to Giovanna Borradori about the dangers of a «return to the exclusivity of premodern belief attitudes» [8, pp. 31–32].

  15. For a reconstitution of this «decentring», see specially 15, volume I, pp. 164 ff., 441 ff., 455–460, volume II, pp. 179 e ff., 209 ff., 225–227, 270 ff., 413 ff., 571–593.

  16. An eloquent use of this counterpoint (denouncing «the affirmative stance toward social modernity and the denigration of cultural modernity») is developed by Habermas in «Neoconservative culture criticism…» [7, pp. 81 ff.].

  17. These formulae are by Günther Ellsheid [13 , pp. 232–233]. «Der Methodendualismus versteht Sein im Sinne von Faktizität, während der (…) Methodenmonismus Sein als Wesenwirkung begreift» [13, p. 233].

  18. The indispensable development is certainly in Habermas’ «Wahrheitstheorien» [14, pp. 211 ff.].

  19. I shall not consider here the important differences that, concerning «human rights» (defending respectively its «moral» and its «juridical» nature), separate Alexy and Habermas. I’ve explored these differences in «O homo humanus do direito e o projecto inacabado da modernidade» (to be published soon).

  20. The formulations quoted are all from Habermas, «Questions and Counterquestions» [7, pp. 212–216].

  21. This understanding of law’s constitutive cultural-civilizational originarium (which will now be explored) has been eloquently defended and developed by Castanheira Neves [28, passim, 29, pp. 111 ff. (III), 30, pp. 7–10 (II)].

  22. The formulation is by Georges Steiner, although Steiner is certainly not considering here the Roman invention of law, but the different contributions of «Greek thinking» and «Judaic morality» [34, p. 53].

  23. «Unter ihrem Namen wird die Humanitas zum ersten Mal bedacht und erstrebt…» [21], p. 19).

  24. I cite here the specific conception of the legal system proposed by Castanheira Neves [26, pp. 78–81, 152–157, 188–196, 278–283(ßß) and 27, pp. 95 ff.].

  25. The formula is by Simmonds [33, pp. 37 ff («Law as Instrument and as Aspiration»].

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  1. Faculty of Law, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    José Manuel Aroso Linhares

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Aroso Linhares, J.M. Law’s Cultural Project and the Claim to Universality or the Equivocalities of a Familiar Debate. Int J Semiot Law 25, 489–503 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-011-9233-x

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