Principles and Hard Cases

Recommended Prerequisites

Not specified 

Teaching Methods

Participation in seminars, written comments to texts, construction of an original paper, with presentation and discussion in class.

Learning Outcomes

The seminar endeavors reconstituting as completly as possible the so-called «theories of hard cases, paying attention to the diversity of their conceptions and solutions, whilst dennouncing some relevant difficulties and paradoxes. On account of the elements it compares and the specific consideration of the role ascribed to different conceptions of principles, this critical exercise has significant methodological consequences concerning Law's realization (and its concrete adjudication).

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

Introduction -- The main question: Is the tension between the binomial easy cases/hard cases and the category legal system (or the reflection which critically witnesses it) a productive one, whilst understanding the pragmatic of plurality which characterizes contemporary legal thinking?

First part - The pragmatic easy cases/hard cases developped in two major contemporary trends : the first one corresponding to common law world’s fight against formalism (with very different fronts, from Law and Economics to Law and Literature, from Critical Legal Scholars to Hart’s critical positivism), the second one considering a certain theory of argumentation (and very specially Alexy’s and MacCormick’s proposals).  

Second part -Exploring critically the possibility of refusing the binomial and the corresponding demarcation exercises, whilst «hearing» successively Dworkin and Castanheira Neves.

Head Lecturer(s)

José Manuel Aroso Linhares

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Research work: 100.0%

Bibliography

LINHARES, José M. Aroso,  O binómio casos fáceis/casos difíceis e a categoria de inteligibilidade sistema jurídico. Um contraponto indispensável no mapa do discurso jurídico contemporâneo?,Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra, 2017

NEVES, António Castanheira, Metodologia Jurídica. Problemas fundamentais, Coimbra, Coimbra Editora, 1993

BRONZE, Fernando, Analogias, Coimbra, Coimbra Editora, 2012

HART, «Discretion», Harvard Law Review,  vol. 127, nº 2, Decembre 2013, pp. 652-665.

ALEXY, Robert, Theorie der juristischen Argumentation, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1978 [traduções portuguesa e castelhna na Biblioteca]

MacCORMICK, Neil, Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory (1978), 2ª ed. revista, Oxford, Oxford Clarendon Press, 1994

ID, Rhetoric and the Rule of Law, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005

DWORKIN, Ronald, Law’s Empire, Cambridge Mass.,The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986

 Outros textos indicados nos seminários.