Law, authority,
and mythical foundations
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"Though this be madness, yet there is method in it"This page contains a description of the courses in legal philosophy in the academic year 2000-2001 that will be offered in English (this year, only one course). Of course, it will in the first place be of interest to students of law and/or philosophy. But it is open to all foreign or exchange students at the Erasmus University.
- Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, ii, 205
Law, authority,
and mythical foundationsCourse description
Law necessarily claims authority. Without
such a claim, a legal norm would be no more than a request ('would you
like to sit down?'), an exhortation ('sit down if you like'), or a mere
command ('sit down!'). But where does law's claim to authority derive from?
How do we negotiate this claim? What sort of norms or considerations do
we need for such negotiation? In this course, such questions will be discussed
with special reference to constitutional judgment. Theoretical approaches
to this matter, which include issues of judicial discretion, legal principles,
and the fundamentals of the juridical-constitutional order, will be connected
to a special case study, namely the constitutional crisis that arose after
the American presidential elections. Authors to be discussed include Carl
Schmitt, Giorgio Agamben, H.L.A. Hart, Ronald Dworkin, Stanley Fish, Bonnie
Honig and Jacques Derrida.
Preliminary schedule
1. 24/01 Introduction, information on the course, background.
2. 31/01 Carl Schmitt. Der Begriff
des Politischen. Duncker und Humblot, Berlin, 1963 (p. 20-79). English
translation: The concept of the political. Rutgers un press 1976
* Primary text by Carl Schmitt
3. 07/02 John McCormick, John. Carl Schmitt’s
critique of liberalism. Cambridge university press 1997. Chapter 5: ‘Law’,
p. 206-248.
On Carl Schmitt’s theory of law and politics
4. 14/02 H.L.A. Hart. The concept
of law. Oxford un. press 1961, chapter 4: ‘Formalism and rule-scepticism’,
p. 121-150.
On the nature and authority of judicial
discretion
5. 21/02 Andrew Altman, 'Legal realism,
Critical legal studies, and Dworkin'. In: Philosophy and Public Affairs,
summer 1986, 15/3, 205-235
Perspectives on law and authority from
Ronald Dworkin and the CLS movement critically contrasted
6. 28/02 Stanley Fish. Doing what comes
naturally. Chapter 7: ‘Change’, p. 141-160
Fish’s own point of view about what goes
on in ‘interpretive communities’
7. 07/03 Decision Florida Supreme Court + Decision U.S. Supreme Court
8. 14/03 Gijs van Oenen. ‘Thus spoke
Solomon. On the American election crisis and the meaning of constitutional
judgment.’ Draft. Read a fragment
from this draft.
Constitutional judgments in the US election
as (misunderstood) Solomonic judgments.
9. 28/03 Sigmund Freud, Totem und
Tabu (selected passages).
Classic psychoanalytic interpretation
of basic anthropological insights concerning origins
10. 04/04 Bonnie Honig. ‘Foundational
myths in Rousseau and Freud.’ Paper for APSA, Atlanta 1999 and CSPT 2000,
Quebec. To appear as chapter 2 of id., No place like home: democracy and
foreignness, Princeton university press 2001.
On the foreignness of founders
11. 11/04 Samuel Weber, ‘In the name of
the law’, 232-257. In: Drucilla Cornell a.o. (eds.), Deconstruction and
the possibility of justice. Routledge 1992
Between Derrida and Rousseau
12. 18/04 Giorgio Agamben. Homo sacer.
Sovereign power and the naked life. Stanford university press 1998. (original
in Italian, Torino 1995). Part 1: The logic of sovereignty.
On the nature of sovereignty and ‘the
state of exception’
13. 02/05 Jacques Derrida, ‘Force of law:
the mystical foundation of authority’, 3-67. In: Drucilla Cornell a.o.
(eds.), Deconstruction and the possibility of justice. Routledge 1992
The original argument on the mystical
(or: mythical?) foundation of authority
14. 09/05 Last meeting, evaluation.
A reader of the texts will be made available
to students.
For more info contact the instructor:
Dr Gijs van Oenen, Department of Philosophy,
Oostmaaslaan 950 (5 minutes from Woudestein campus),
tel. +31.10.4088999 or +31.20.6860948.
email:vanOenen@fwb.eur.nl.
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