Deliberating over legislative ends (original) (raw)

Pitfalls in the evaluation of argumentation in the legislative process

Leiden Journal of International Law - LEIDEN J INT LAW, 2005

The quality of argumentation in parliamentary debates may play an important role in the evaluation of legislative decisions. In this contribution I will discuss shortcomings in the application of the pragma-dialectical argumentation theory for the analysis and evaluation of the argumentation in a parliamentary debate op the penalization of stalking. The case illustrates that institutional preconditions of a specific type of debate should be taken into account in order to be able to give an adequate analysis of these debates.

Pragmatic argumentation in lawmaking debates. Phd dissertation (Published). Ch. 1-3

SicSat, 2012

Instruments for the analysis and evaluation of pragmatic argumentation at the Second Reading of the British Parliament ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof. dr. D.C. van de Boom ten overstaan van een door het college voor promoties ingestelde commissie, in het openbaar te verdedigen in de Agnietenkapel op vrijdag

Legislative Measures and Legislators' Motives

Comparative Constitutional Studies, 2024

This review of Wojciech Sadurski's Constitutional Public Reason (OUP 2022), forthcoming in Comparative Constitutional Studies, explores the relationship between the legislative measures voted on by legislators and their motivations for so voting. The relationship between such measures and motivations is examined by reference to GEM Anscombe's famous example of a man at a pump to illustrate the different descriptions that may be given for a human action. Where the relevant action requires the participation of more than one person, only that aspect of each person's plan of action that is shared with the others can be ascribed to them jointly, suggesting that the purpose of legislation does not encompass every motivation of the diverse legislators that voted for it.

Persuasion and value in legal argument

2005

Abstract In this paper we consider legal reasoning as a species of practical reasoning. As such it is important both that arguments are considered in the context of competing, attacking and supporting arguments, and that the possibility of rational disagreement is accommodated. We present two formal frameworks for considering systems of arguments: the standard framework of Dung, and an extension which relates arguments to values allowing for rational disagreement.

Constitutional Reasoning and Political Deliberation

German Law Journal, 2013

In the recent Anglo-American scholarly debate, contrary to that of continental Europe, judicial review of legislation raises strong criticism for various aspects. Among these, I will examine the claim that legislators are better equipped than courts in constitutional reasoning, on the ground that the institutional settings and procedures affecting the former ensures a better protection of rights than those that characterize the judicial function. The following questions will be posed: Do legislators primarily deal with rights as such? Do they reason about rights, and in that case for which purposes? Are these purposes sufficiently similar to those affecting the judicial reasoning about rights? Why in most legal orders courts are bound to reason-giving? While answering these questions, I will outline the different meaning that consequentialist reasoning is likely to acquire, respectively, in representative assemblies and on the bench. I will then classify the kinds of juridical conse...

Goals in Argumentation: A Proposal for the Analysis and Evaluation of Public Political Arguments

In this paper, I review and compare major literature on goals in argumentation scholarship, aiming to answer the question of how to take the different goals of arguers into account when analysing and evaluating public political arguments. On the basis of the review, I suggest to differentiate between the different goals along two important distinctions: first, distinguish between goals which are intrinsic to argumentation and goals which are extrinsic to it and second distinguish between goals of the act of arguing and goals of argumentative interactions. Furthermore, I propose to analyse public political arguments as multi-purposive activity types and reconstruct the argumentative exchanges as a series of simultaneous discussions. This enables us to examine public political arguments from a perspective in which the intrinsic goals of argumentation are in principle instrumental for the achievement of the socio-political purposes of argumentation, and consequently, it makes our assessment of the argumentative quality of the argument also indicative of the quality of the socio-political processes to which the arguments contribute.

Argumentation Schemes for Statutory Interpretation

F. Macagno, D. Walton and G. Sartor, Argumentation 2012: International Conference on Alternative Methods of Argumentation in Law, ed. Michal Araszkiewicz et al., Brno: 2012, 61-75.

In this paper it is shown how defeasible argumentation schemes can be used to represent the logical structure of the thirteen types of arguments recognized as important for statutory interpretation by (Tarello,1980). It is shown that the process of statutory interpretation has a distinctive argumentative structure where the conclusion, namely, the meaning attributed to a legal source, is a claim that needs to be supported by pro and contra defeasible arguments.

Goals and functions of public argumentation

This position paper of Working Group 2 of the European Network for Argumentation and Public Policy Analysis (COST Action CA17132; https://publicpolicyargument.eu) reviews goals and functions of public argumentation. Drawing on a variety of disciplines, the paper introduces basic distinctions and charts out options. It is meant to guide reflection on the conceptual basis for the Action’s subsequent research regarding the analysis, evaluation, and design of public argumentation.