{"title":"An intuitive approach to hard cases","authors":"Tomasz Zygmunt","doi":"10.36633/ulr.505","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.36633/ulr.505","url":null,"abstract":"The article proposes an intuitive approach to the so-called ‘hard cases’ in law as an alternative to traditional legal-theoretical accounts of this phenomenon. The main thesis of the intuitive approach is that all judgments and decisions made in a legal setting – including both legal practice and legal theory – are intuition-based. Hence, conceptualizations of legal phenomena can be made more accurate if they are constructed with the use of scientific knowledge on the role of intuition in legal reasoning. An exemplification of this approach is presented in the context of ‘hard cases’. Traditional legal-theoretical accounts of the latter, such as Hart’s and Dworkin’s, are juxtaposed with the Representational Change Theory of Insight. The proposed analysis claims that the Representational Change Theory allows for a more plausible and comprehensive account of legal reasoning in hard cases in comparison to the traditional legal-theoretical views on this issue.","PeriodicalId":44535,"journal":{"name":"Utrecht Law Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48131783","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":"Divided but harmonious? The interpretations and applications of article 31(3)(c) of the vienna convention on the law of treaties","authors":"Ivo Tarik de Vries-Zou","doi":"10.36633/ulr.528","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.36633/ulr.528","url":null,"abstract":"In response to an anxiety about the multiplication of special regimes, international lawyers looked towards Article 31(3)(c) of the Vienna Convention of the Law of Treaties to help sustain the unity of international law. Suppose though that the provision is as susceptible to fragmentation as any other rule; its interpretation and application may fall victim to the narrow interests of the regimes it is meant to harmonise with the rest of international law. This article thus analyses various judicial decisions to measure the extent to which fora have conflicted in ascertaining the normative content of Article 31(3)(c). Using strict and relaxed definitions of jurisprudential conflict, the article concludes that, in both cases, the interpretations and applications of the provision remain coherent, but with some key qualifications.","PeriodicalId":44535,"journal":{"name":"Utrecht Law Review","volume":"16 1","pages":"86-100"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47769567","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 use of non-domestic legal sources in Supreme Court of Canada judgments: Is this the judicial slowbalization of the court?","authors":"Klodian Rado","doi":"10.36633/ulr.584","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.36633/ulr.584","url":null,"abstract":"Observed from the perspective of citation of foreign judgments, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) is often considered one of the world’s most cosmopolitan and proactive actors in transnational judicial conversation. However, there are also other forms of non-domestic legal sources that Courts engage with, such as: foreign law, international case law, and international treaties. Hence, the ‘globalist’ or ‘localist’ approach of a court cannot be assessed without looking from this broader perspective. By examining all the 1223 judgments issued by the SCC over 17 years (2000–2016), this study offers a comprehensive picture of citations of all forms of non-domestic legal sources. Remarkably, the empirical data show that the Court has extensively engaged with all forms of non-domestic legal sources, and cites such foreign authorities in approximately 50 different fields of law. This article is distinct in that it combines two different perspectives when analyzing the data: the SCC as an institution and its individual judges. From an institutional perspective, such all-inclusive records demonstrate that foreign citation is decreasing, a trend which may jeopardize the high prestige of the SCC in the global arena. Similar trend is noticeable when the data is analyzed also from an individual-judge perspective. In providing an empirical picture of individual judges’ engagement with non-domestic legal sources, this Article attempts to categorize the 21 justices that have served in the SCC during the 17-year timeframe into three groups: ‘high globalist judges’, ‘moderate globalist judges’, and ‘localist judges’. The article ends with few remarks regarding whether this is a judicial slowbalization of the Court.","PeriodicalId":44535,"journal":{"name":"Utrecht Law Review","volume":"16 1","pages":"57-85"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41462453","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":"Experimental legal methods in the classroom","authors":"A. Dyevre, M. Ovádek","doi":"10.36633/ULR.557","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.36633/ULR.557","url":null,"abstract":"As legal research and scholarship are increasingly turning to interdisciplinary approaches, the question arises as to how to introduce quantitative research techniques to a student population usually unfamiliar with empirical methods. We argue that classroom experiments form an effective — and, from the perspective of students, attractive — way to teach law students the logic of empirical inquiry. Many questions and controversies on and around adjudication and the impact of legal regulations hinge on matters of beliefs and behaviour which experimental methods are well-suited to investigate. Moreover, experimental legal research is fairly intuitive and does not require advanced statistical knowledge. Thanks to modern software tools, experiments can be conducted and analysed in the classroom without much prior technical knowledge. We provide basic guidance on how to undertake in-class experimental legal research and discuss examples of in-class experiments on gender effects, anchoring effects and neutrality bias.","PeriodicalId":44535,"journal":{"name":"Utrecht Law Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46986854","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":"Clear skies or turbulence ahead? The international civil aviation organization’s obligation to mitigate climate change","authors":"Baine P. Kerr","doi":"10.36633/ulr.551","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.36633/ulr.551","url":null,"abstract":"The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) set a cap for international aviation’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at its 2020 level and established a market-based mechanism to help achieve that cap. Against that backdrop, this article identifies ICAO’s legal obligation to mitigate climate change by examining the international climate change treaties, ICAO’s constituent treaty, the Chicago Convention, and ICAO’s organizational practice. It finds that because ICAO is not a party to the climate change treaties and has a high degree of institutional autonomy, those treaties do not directly impose an obligation on ICAO. Although the Chicago Convention does not expressly mention the environment or climate change, ICAO’s member states interpreted the Convention and enlarged ICAO’s mandate under it to include the reduction or limitation of GHG emissions from international aviation so as to prevent dangerous climate change. This article finds that pursuant to Jan Klabbers’ recently developed theory of role responsibility, ICAO arguably has an obligation to carry out this important mandate, and its failure to do so, or failure to do so effectively, could constitute an internationally wrongful omission.","PeriodicalId":44535,"journal":{"name":"Utrecht Law Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47623507","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 Legal Profession in the Age of Digitalisation","authors":"Werner Schäfke-Zell, I. Asmussen","doi":"10.36633/ULR.454","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.36633/ULR.454","url":null,"abstract":"There is consensus within the legal profession that it needs to adapt to the on-going digitalisation of the legal market and the changing means of production of the legal commodity. This adaptation will also necessitate a transformation of legal education to assimilate the changes that the legal profession will undergo. The question is, however, how might the legal profession adapt to its digitalisation? In this article, we will describe three possible pathways that the legal profession might follow. These are based on synchronous sociological models of the dynamics of the legal profession and the legal market as well as diachronous sociological descriptions of the history of the legal profession over the past century. In order to concretise these hypotheses, we will focus on the legal profession in three similar countries between which there is some level of comparability: Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. The three hypothetical pathways are understood to be non-mutually exclusive. We will then answer our core question: how must legal education be transformed to take into consideration the digitalisation of the legal profession? To answer this question, we will describe three possible transformations in legal education that would consider the pathways that the legal profession might pursue to adapt to the digitalisation of its market and the production of its commodity.","PeriodicalId":44535,"journal":{"name":"Utrecht Law Review","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43758786","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":"Unhealthy, (Un)Lawful? A Multidimensional Study of Legal but\u0000 Potentially Lethal Products and Services","authors":"A. Keirse, J. Emaus","doi":"10.36633/ulr.537","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.36633/ulr.537","url":null,"abstract":"Products and services like mobile phones, tasty manufactured food and tobacco have enriched today’s life and brought us happiness and prosperity. However, the moment these products were introduced to the market, we did not know or were not aware of the risks the new products and services embodied. We know now that mobile phones may be health-threatening, tasty manufactured food under some circumstances is health threatening and smoking kills. Those three products illustrate a serious global societal problem, which is the legitimate offer of products and services that are potentially lethal. On a yearly basis, legal but lethal products and services greatly damage society in various ways. Not only do the costs of healthcare rise as victims call on healthcare, it also causes a loss of social economic potential. Although offering the products and services on the market is legal, the role of the law remains important to take action to help to prevent avoidable harm and to facilitate a safe environment.","PeriodicalId":44535,"journal":{"name":"Utrecht Law Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47385859","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}