Showing papers in "Netherlands journal of legal philosophy in 2012"

Who is ‘we’?

Abstract: A question that has been haunting the liberal-democratic project since the 1960s – and here we must straightaway distinguish this ‘project’ from ‘real existing liberal democracy’ – was revived not so long ago by Jurgen Habermas in his famous discussion with Joseph Ratzinger: ‘The theme that has been proposed for our discussion [‘Pre-political moral conditions of a liberal state,’ EvdZ] recalls a question that Ernst Wolfgang Bockenforde formulated in the mid-1960s as follows: whether a liberal, secularized state feeds on normative presuppositions that it cannot itself guarantee.’3

The Collapse of the Rule of Law

Abstract: Recent tragic events in this debut de siecle years have reminded us of the extent of the challenge that law faces in the founding of what is assumed to be the normality of societal and political relations. Contemporary emergency situations, in which war and enemies are – so to say – deconstructed into a diffused presence and threat, make the challenges that law faces in situations of emergency again an important topic for institutional deliberation and theoretical debate. The question of the state of exception, the German Ausnahmezustand is the topic of this article, seen however through the looking-glass of a special historical event, the Messina earthquake of 1908. This case is carefully circumscribed but at the same time of such gross proportions that its study can help to better understand our contemporary predicament.

Arbeidsplicht, rechtvaardigheid en de grondslagen van het socialezekerheidsrecht

Abstract: 1 Inleiding Mag een uitkeringsgerechtigde in het kader van de uitvoering van de Wet werk en bijstand (WWB) verplicht worden om vijf dagen per week eenvoudige tuinbouwwerkzaamheden te verrichten? Deze vraag werd twee jaar geleden behandeld door de Centrale Raad van Beroep, de hoogste Nederlandse beroepsinstantie op het terrein van de sociale zekerheid. 1 Eerder was een soortgelijke vraag al aan de orde bij de Rechtbank Arnhem. 2 In beide zaken ging het om de juridische toelaatbaarheid van zogenaamde Work-first-projecten waarin uitkeringsgerechtigden worden verplicht om deel te nemen aan begeleid werk ter voorbereiding van het verkrijgen van regulier werk. In feite lag aan deze juridische vraag een andere, meer filosofische, vraag ten grondslag, namelijk: In hoeverre kan van een individuele burger verlangd worden dat hij iets terugdoet voor hetgeen hij van de gemeenschap ontvangt? Deze bijdrage tracht de filosofische grondslag van de juridische toetsing verder te ontrafelen. Het aangrijpingspunt voor dit onderzoek wordt gevormd door de eerder genoemde uitspraak van de Centrale Raad van Beroep. Verplichte arbeidstrajecten, ofwel Work-first-maatregelen, kennen in Angelsaksische landen al een langere geschiedenis. 3 De invoering van deze trajecten is in de internationale juridische literatuur kritisch beoordeeld. De argumentatie leunde hierbij in sommige gevallen op een gedegen politiek-filosofische bezinning op de vraag of de uitkeringsgerechtigde iets terug moet doen voor de uitkering. 4 In de Nederlandstalige juridische literatuur ontbreekt deze filosofische benadering doorgaans. Zoals Danny Pieters in zijn oratie over het arbeidsethos in het socialezekerheidsrecht in 1986 betoogde, zal dit ten dele te maken hebben met het feit

‘Down Freedom’s Main Line’

Abstract: Two principal trends define this post-Cold War, post-9/11 era of globalization. The first is the spread of market economies under the neoliberal aegis colloquially known as the Washington consensus. The second, more fitful development is the spread of democracy. This occurred in two spurts, separated by more than a decade. The first wave saw democracies emerge in the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and in post-Apartheid South Africa. The second wave began only in 2010 with the successful uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya that – together with foment in Yemen, Syria, and elsewhere in the Middle East – has come to be known collectively as the ‘Arab Spring.’ Similar popular protest is afoot in several established democracies: particularly the anti-corruption movement in India, but also the mass student protests in Chile known at the ‘Chilean Winter’ and the Occupy Wall Street movement which started in New York, spread across the United States, and then jumped to Western Europe. Seeds of protest are sprouting in Russia and in Wukan in China.

Hoe neutraal is kerkfinanciering?: kritische analyse van het Belgische erkennings- en ondersteuningsbeleid

Abstract: Historisch gezien hecht het liberalisme als politiek-filosofische theorie veel belang aan de scheiding tussen kerk en staat. Deze scheiding moet de overheid beschermen tegen illegitieme inmenging van godsdiensten én deze godsdiensten en haar gelovigen beschermen tegen ongewenste politieke bemoeienis.1 De scheiding tussen kerk en staat fungeert als een normatief politiek-filosofische vooronderstelling om een faire, pluralistische samenleving op te bouwen en godsdienstvrijheid rechtvaardig vorm te geven. Er bestaat echter geen consensus over de manier waarop de scheiding tussen kerk en staat, die we vandaag beter kunnen interpreteren als een scheiding tussen levensbeschouwing en staat, in de praktijk moet worden omgezet. In de praktijk worden de particuliere kerk-staatverhoudingen steeds getekend door contextuele en historische elementen.

Globalization as a Factor in General Jurisprudence

Abstract: What reason, if any, do legal theorists have to treat globalization as a matter of theoretical concern? This paper will examine the claim, made with increasing force and frequency in recent years, that there are indeed compelling reasons for legal theory to engage critically with the phenomena of globalization, but that the discipline has thus far responded poorly to its associated challenges. Legal theorists, arguably more so than their colleagues in the humanities and social sciences, have in the words of one commentator offered a ‘paucity of theoretical underpinning for the development of law as an academic discipline into the broader territory that current global trends now present.’1

Steven L. Winter: Political Freedom, the Free Market, and Consumerism

Abstract: According to Bertrand Russell, freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.1 The stoics, by contrast, hold that freedom is secured not by the fulfilling of desires, but by their removal.2 For them, freedom is a peaceful state of mind (apatheia) and opposed to a life dominated by passions. A different conception of freedom appeared when President Roosevelt delivered his State of the Union address in 1941, and proposed a world order founded upon the Four Freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. That kind of world, he asserted, ‘is the very antithesis of the so-called “new order” of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.’3 George Orwell, in the intended preface to the UK edition of Animal Farm, contrasts freedom with censorship: ‘If liberty means anything at all, it means telling people what they do not want to hear.’4 The concept of freedom, it seems, needs the language of negation in order to be defined, and appears in connection, albeit inversely, to what is abhorred or rejected: the tyranny of lust and passions, dictatorship, or moral or physical constraint. Such a variety of objectionable conditions or states of affairs placed over against freedom indicates that freedom, although one single word, does not have one essence, but covers different concepts. Yet, the inclination to treat freedom as a concept with an unequivocal essence is tenacious. The result is confusion between the different usages of the term freedom, each legitimate in its own sphere, but confusing in others.

We are also here. Whose revolution will democracy be

Abstract: In 1796, inspired by the so-called Batavian Revolution, a small satirical Dutch journal related the ‘minutes’ of a newly erected organisation ‘We are also here’ (‘Wij zijn er óók nog’).1 Its title may, for all its humoristic and ironic intent, have been the most succinct summary imaginable of the quintessential message of democratic revolts. In this particular case, however, the message was more precisely framed – directed at the revolutionaries themselves. Writing about a women’s association, it contained a tongue-in-cheek statement of the desire of women to be included in the democratic revolts that were evolving in end-eighteenth-century Europe. It served to remind its readers of the democratic tenet of popular sovereignty (the ‘we’ of democracy), as well as of the heterogeneity of that very people. Citizens, it was made clear, have specific identities and interests, and exclusions from citizenship – whether in legal or social senses – easily occur on the basis of such differences.