Showing papers by "Neil MacCormick published in 1993"

Beyond the Sovereign State

Abstract: A different view would be that sovereignty and sovereign states, and the inexorable linkage of law with sovereignty and the state, have been but the passing phenomena of a few centuries that their passing is by no means regrettable. This will be the view stated in the present lecture. The order of presentation will be through consideration of some connected points. The first one is to locate sovereignty and the theory of sovereign statehood in the setting of legal theory, showing how developments in European Community law raise difficulties for some standard positions in legal theory. The second point is to proceed into some fresh conceptual analysis of sovereignty and statehood, moving forward from the juristic inheritance. The third is to discuss some consequences of a belief in Sovereign Statehood. The difference between the predominantly legal and the predominantly political conception of sovereignty now appears.

Argumentation and Interpretation in Law

Abstract: The author proceeds from a brief elucidation of the concept “argumentation” through a more extended account of substantive reasons in pure practical argumentation and of institutional argumentation applying “authority reasons” as grounds for legal decisions to an initial account of the nature and place of legal interpretative reasoning. Then he explores the three main categories of interpretative arguments, linguistic arguments, systemic arguments and teleological/deontological arguments; and he examines the problem of conflicts of interpretation and their resolution. His conclusion is that legal argumentation is only partly autonomous since it has to be embedded within widerelements of practical argumentation.