Legality Matters
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Legality Matters
This book examines the way international criminal courts and tribunals have interpreted the crimes against humanity proscription of other inhumane acts. This clause is consistently used in spite of the long list of more specific offences forbidden as crimes against humanity. The volume proposes that the current approach is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the clause. Properly understood, the clause is an invitation to courts to create and apply retroactive criminal laws. This leads to a problem. A prohibition on the use of retroactive criminal laws, one which admits no exceptions, is deeply embedded in international law. The author argues that it is time to revisit the assumption that retroactive criminal laws can never be deployed in a fair legal system. Drawing lessons from an exploration on the way the prohibition on retroactive laws is applied in practice, she proposes a new framework for understanding the clause proscribing the commission of other inhumane acts. This book will be of relevance to anyone interested in international criminal law or criminal law theory. Gillian MacNeil is Assistant Professor at Robson Hall, the Faculty of Law of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada.
Transnational Legality
What should we call law when it is not the law of one or several states? Does it actually matter what we call law? How can we take into account the consequences of calling something law when we shape the concept of law in the first place? How does international arbitration help to illustrate the problem? This book is an investigation into stateless law, illustrated by international arbitration regimes. It addresses key philosophical questions posed by international arbitration as a potential path to law beyond the state. It ascertains which dimensions of transnational legality arbitral regimes conform to, and what consequences follow from it. The argument of this book is firmly rooted in contemporary legal positivism and is attentive to current debates regarding the rule of law to ponder legality without territory. A theory is suggested regarding the minimal conditions that transnational regimes must fulfil in order to legitimately and appropriately count as law. The theory is tested on various arbitral regimes. The book thus offers reflections on the extent to which legality and the rule of law can serve as a moral and political benchmark for transnational regimes, to assess the political morality of arbitration's current autonomy from states and what arbitration's claim for an increase in that autonomy implies.
Legality
Author: Scott J. Shapiro
language: en
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Release Date: 2013-09-02
What is law? This question has preoccupied philosophers from Plato to Thomas Hobbes to H. L. A. Hart. Yet many others find it perplexing. How could we possibly know how to answer such an abstract question? And what would be the point of doing so? In Legality, Scott Shapiro argues that the question is not only meaningful but vitally important. In fact, many of the most pressing puzzles that lawyers confront—including who has legal authority over us and how we should interpret constitutions, statutes, and cases—will remain elusive until this grand philosophical question is resolved. Shapiro draws on recent work in the philosophy of action to develop an original and compelling answer to this age-old question. Breaking with a long tradition in jurisprudence, he argues that the law cannot be understood simply in terms of rules. Legal systems are best understood as highly complex and sophisticated tools for creating and applying plans. Shifting the focus of jurisprudence in this way—from rules to plans—not only resolves many of the most vexing puzzles about the nature of law but has profound implications for legal practice as well. Written in clear, jargon-free language, and presupposing no legal or philosophical background, Legality is both a groundbreaking new theory of law and an excellent introduction to and defense of classical jurisprudence.