Freedom and legisprudence - A more substantial view: A reply to professor perju (original) (raw)

2009, Boston University Law Review

INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 1795 I. REFLEXIVITY AND EQUALITY ............................................................ 1797 A. Reflexivity as the First Normative Dimension of Freedom ........ 1797 B. From Origin to Principium: Equality as the Second Normative Dimension of Freedom ............................................ 1797 II. FREEDOM CONTEXTUALIZED: FREEDOM AS PRINCIPIUM IN CONTEXT ........................................................................................... 1799 III. LAW’S CONTEXT: FREEDOM AS DISTANCE ....................................... 1801

Liberty and Law. Institutional Circumstances of Freedom

2007

My aim in this article is twofold. I will discuss different ways of conceptualising the relation between liberty and law. By ‘law’ I refer throughout to law in the sense of civil law: rules with accompanying sanctions, promulgated by a legislator for the regulation of action in political society. I do not intend to say anything about ‘natural law’, unless I explicitly state otherwise. For the purposes of my argument I will loosely group the positions I discuss under different labels: ‘liberty from the law’, ‘liberty by the law’, and ‘liberty under law’. There is nothing self-serving about these labels; indeed, they may appear simplistic and historically inept. I use them to direct our attention and in order to illustrate my second aim, which is to make a fairly general point that seems to me to fall out of the preceding discussion. That point is that concepts like liberty are institution dependent and that we cannot hope to understand or even talk about what they mean without adhering to that fact. I will argue that even when liberty is understood in terms of the absence of law, the presence of law or the possibility of its presence will have to be assumed in principle in order for its absence to make sense. Freedom from law refers to different kinds of absences, depending on whether the law that is not there is the institution itself or an instance of regulation within an institution that is present.

The Concept of Freedom: Effects of Ockham’s Revolution

2020

. The notion of freedom is one of the most important topics in philosophy. For centuries different, often opposing, conceptions of freedom were developed. This article deals with the main points of the traditional conception (freedom for excellence) created primarily by Thomas Aquinas, and with the transition of European thought to a different, even contrary conception (freedom of indifference). The author shows how this second conception proposed by Ockham, found its place in the philosophy of such different philosophers as Rousseau, Kant, Sartre, and in the everyday thinking of contemporary people.

Law, Liberties, and their Relationships: The Development of a Controversial Issue from the U.S. Bill of Rights to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights Introduction: Liberty and Property in the Nineteenth Century Liberal State

The relationship that exists between the law and civil liberties has characterized the development of the same idea of freedom. Whilst in the civil law countries, during the XIX century, the law was considered as the principal means in order to protect the liberties that liberal revolutions had affirmed, in United States the congress was thought as the first menace for individual freedoms. These two approaches illustrate a more general issue: the protection of civil rights needs at the same time two different and potentially contradictory conditions: a) The Legislator must actively contribute and adopt regulations that define the individual circle of liberty; b) The constitutional system has to control the legislator in order to prevent him from passing legislation that curtails individual freedoms. These needs directly impact the drafting of constitutional provisions that protect liberties and lead its evolution through the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. Tihs essay investigates this topic firstly through an analysis of the main theories that legal scholarship developed during the last two centuries on the relationship that exists between law and freedom. Secondly, it analyses constitutional drafting in order to examine the concrete relationship that exists between law and liberties in some relevant constitutional experience, from the U.S. Bill of Rights to the EU Charter of fundamental rights.

Freedom and its diachrony

Global Intellectual History

Probably everyone involved with the related disciplines in the humanities for some time knows how difficult it is to discuss about liberty and freedom beyond one's area of expertize or the inclinations of personal view that one gradually develops on a topic taken to have been so intimately bound with the very desirability of human life throughout the ages. In these respects, it might not be a bad idea to agree with Annelien de Dijn's introductory comment that despite 'such an endeavour involv[ing] hazards [of this kind] … they are worth undertaking' (p. 11), as one can tell out of her successful provision of an accessible account of the long history of freedom from ancient Greece to our times, undertaken with the aid of the careful documentation required, with a close hearing of latest advice, and proving her hard-won overall erudition about it. This being so, even though every specialist would be interested to see more lexical, contextual or argumentative nuance having found its way to the final text, perhaps some important gratitude can be due to the author, since such an informed treatment can largely facilitate the discussion between different views by urging each side to reflect upon the concrete interrelations of the various cases as well as to go on considering the relative standing of each view and the stakes that seem to lie beyond them every time. Adding to this, the general outlook of the work seems to be inviting to further elaborations of the multiple aspects of this great theme either by the author herself or by her engaged readers in the times to come. Hoping therefore to minimally contribute to such a cause, the following paragraphs will reserve some of the emphasis for a few issues that seem to be apt for such further inquiry. Some of the ways in which the work allows for further thoughts can be discerned already in the introduction. In the first place, de Dijn is quite conscious that her studying 'the conventional West', an area fitter for attempting some uniform comprehension according to reigning academic standards, is far from insensitive to the emergence of recognizable notions of freedom and other ideas of affinity in various other settings across the times as well, from millennial Mesopotamia and the ancient Jewish sources

The Conception of Liberty Through the Ages

In this paper I look at changing conceptions of liberty by examining the views of Aristotle, Machiavelli, and then Locke and Madison. I compare and contrast their views on ethics, then their views on relations between people, then the political structures they propose. I argue that the change in views on liberty began with changes in ideas of self-control leading up to Machiavelli, but the Liberal view did not replace the Republican view until Locke and Madison espoused new ideas about the state of nature emphasizing individual property rights.

The Structure of Freedom

This essay explores what our understanding of freedom consists of. Though a main aspect of Rietveld's text, I feel he hasn't answered this question precisely enough. Naturally, our individual notions of freedom may vary, but I attempt to formulate the common structure which facilitates these concepts. I begin with an introduction of how epiphenomenalists challenge the notion of freedom, which I feel warrants my phenomenological approach. After stipulating the structure of the experience of freedom, I refer back to Merleau-Ponty and Rietveld to apply this in cases they have provided.

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