The Issue of Alternatives to the Law

Recommended Prerequisites

Not specified

Teaching Methods

Seminar-like discussion of the topics, with lectures and discussion on texts read in advance.

Continuous assessment: regular participation highly appreciated, though the main component will be the discussion of a working paper previousluy submitted to the instructor and the other participants will be the main   

Learning Outcomes

The aim is to address the wealth of answers provided by contemporary legal thought and - given the fact that ours is a post-paradigm or paradigm-free era - provide conditions for discussing the possibility and the urge to challenge the Law (a certain kind of Law) as a culturally available project or civilizationally situated "form of life", as a praxis for the creation/realization of specific community meanings, with intentionally and teleologically unmistakable integration solutions (united under a certain understanding of living together) whose continuity must be determined and undergo an ongoing grounding procedure (concerning its validity claims, and its claim as to being in force).

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

Introduction - Identifying the question within the framework of a diagnosed crisis of the Law and of the required problematization of it. The need to distinguish between «alternatives in the Law» (Kurt Seelmann) and «alternatives to the Law» (Castanheira Neves). The possibility of considering the «alternatives to the Law» issue in two different steps: taking an internal cultural and civilizational perspective; facing the challenge of an intercivilizational dialogue.

Part I -  The internal cultural and civilizational perspective. Reconstructing the conditions for juridicity to come about. The alternatives of power, science, politics and ethics. Analysis of various examples of discourses - e.g. Social Engineering, Law and Economics, Critical Legal Studies and Postmodern Jurisprudences.

Part II - Could the Law as a  civilizationally situated form of life ensure the tertiality conditions required by intercultural dialogue?

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Research work: 100.0%

Bibliography

Neves, A. Castanheira-– «O direito como alternativa humana. Notas de reflexão sobre o problema actual do direito», Digesta, Coimbra, Coimbra Editora, vol 1º, 1995, pp. 287-310

Id., Digesta, vol. 3º, Coimbra Editora, Coimbra, 2008, pp. 9-128.

Linhares, José M. - «Humanitas, singularidade étnico-genealógica e universalidade cívico-territorial. O “pormenor” do Direito na “ideia” da Europa das nações: um diálogo com o narrativismo comunitarista», Dereito. Revista xurídica da Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, volume 15, número 1, 2006, pp.17-67.

Id., «Law’s Cultural Project and the Claim to Universality or the Equivocalities of a Familiar Debate», International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, vol. 25, nº 4, 2012, pp. 489-503.

Borradori,Giovanna - Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, University Of Chicago Press,003.