{"title":"The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision, Erika Bachiochi","authors":"Gabrielle M. Girgis","doi":"10.1093/ajj/auad003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ajj/auad003","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":39920,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Jurisprudence","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46773247","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reading Finnis and Aquinas on Justice as the Evaluative Standard for Positive Law","authors":"P. Popović","doi":"10.1093/ajj/auad005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ajj/auad005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Justice is known to be an emblematic legal-philosophical criterion that forms part of the evaluative point of law for several prominent authors (such as Robert Alexy and Gustav Radbruch) who advocate that the nature of law is dual, namely, that law has at the same time an evaluative and descriptive nature. John Finnis, a proponent of a contemporary natural-law theory of law who supports a maximalist or full-range approach regarding the aspects of human good, acknowledges the legal importance of the requirement for justice. However, Finnis seems to conceptualize justice as a subset of what he deems the main evaluative standard within the nature of law—practical reasonableness. In this article, I argue that Finnis’s account of law and justice may be fruitfully upgraded by an emphasis on Thomas Aquinas’s texts that highlight the virtue of justice and its object, the juridical phenomenon (ius), as the central evaluative standard and the ideal end of positive law. I also show how a greater emphasis on justice is ultimately compatible with the role of practical reasonableness in explaining the nature of law.","PeriodicalId":39920,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Jurisprudence","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45575727","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Natural Law Theory, “New” and Old","authors":"S. Coyle","doi":"10.1093/ajj/auad004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ajj/auad004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In the second edition of Natural Law and Natural Rights John Finnis observes that, whilst he expected criticism of his theory from positivists, he did not expect it from traditional natural law theorists who felt that the theory was insufficiently grounded in Aquinas’s doctrines. Finnis argued that the divergence was a mirage occasioned by his addressing topics out of the standard orders of treatment. This essay considers what Finnis’s theory would look like if placed back into Aquinas’s orders of treatment, and gauges the extent to which it conforms to Aquinas’s doctrines, and the extent to which it is divergent and “new.” This analysis may hopefully serve as a starting point for further study.","PeriodicalId":39920,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Jurisprudence","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42740320","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"<i>The Making of Constitutional Democracy: From Creation to Application of Law</i>, Paolo Sandro","authors":"Felipe Jiménez","doi":"10.1093/ajj/auad001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ajj/auad001","url":null,"abstract":"The distinction between the creation and application of law, as Paolo Sandro writes at the beginning of The Making of Constitutional Democracy, is a central part of everyday legal discourse (1).1 Yet this distinction is something that many legal theorists have either undermined or dismissed, by arguing that law-application is not really possible (in other words, that law-application is just a form of law-creation). This attitude is problematic—according to Sandro—on at least two levels (1-2). First, without the distinction, it is unclear how law can provide normative guidance to its addressees, given that laws would not be able to tell agents what to do unless and until they are the subject of adjudicative decisions. Second, without the distinction, it seems, we are forced to reject a central legitimating ideal behind representative democracy—namely, the idea that elected representatives make (most of) the law in the name of the people. If law-application is not possible, the idea that legislators make law that judges are bound to apply lacks any foundations (2). Sandro’s main goal, then, is to propose and justify the distinction, and to show how law’s action-guiding capacity and constitutional democracy are premised on it (17).","PeriodicalId":39920,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Jurisprudence","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136197238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Legacy of John Finnis: Contemporary Engagements and Developments","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/ajj/auac015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ajj/auac015","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":39920,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Jurisprudence","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47022288","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Law as Peace (Or Why I Am Still a Hard-Core Positivist)","authors":"C. Kletzer","doi":"10.1093/ajj/auac011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ajj/auac011","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The fact that the most prominent brands of positivism and natural law theory, namely their Razian and Finnisian variants, are in agreement about some hitherto hotly contested issues has over the decades become more of an entertaining curio than an actual concern that ruffles any theoretical feathers. Whatever its benefits, this great convergence requires positivism to forfeit much of what has originally made it a theoretically appealing position. One of the many reasons for the curious alignment of positivism with natural law theory has been a focus on the explanatory power and theoretical import of the phenomenon of friendship. If we allow the countervailing forces of enmity to be given their due weight, a different model of law emerges, namely law as peace, which is more resistant to the contortions and ultimate self-abandonment that ensues from the alignment of positivism with natural law theory.","PeriodicalId":39920,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Jurisprudence","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41593706","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}