Naslov
Legal Systems as Abstract Artifacts

Autori
Burazin, Luka

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, neobjavljeni rad, znanstveni

Skup
Analytic Philosophy meets Legal Theory [2021]

Mjesto i datum
Kraków, Poljska, 30.09.2021. - 03.10.2021

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Pozvano predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Nije recenziran

Ključne riječi
legal system, artifact, abstract artifact, social ontology

Sažetak
The chapter claims that legal systems qua (sequences of) sets of legal norms fit neither of the two traditional ontological categories of entities. Although in an important sense related to contingent concrete entities such as legal officials, citizens, legal practice and normative documents, legal systems themselves are not concrete physical particulars. Also, although abstractions and thus intangible, immaterial and lacking a spatiotemporal location in the strict sense, they can neither be categorized as Platonistic ideal abstracta. By applying Thomasson’s artifactual theory, the chapter argues that legal systems should best be conceived as abstract artifacts, i.e., created immaterial objects existentially dependent on a variety of other entities. Legal systems are immaterial, with no spatiotemporal location in the strict sense, and in this sense abstract entities. However, they are located in time and treated by us as created entities (and thus artifacts) that depend on a number of concrete entities for both their coming into existence and remaining in existence. The chapter explained the ways in which legal systems existentially depend on legal officials, citizens, legal practice and normative documents. Such an understanding of the ontology of legal systems fits many of our basic intuitions about and experiences with legal systems. E.g., that legal systems are human-made, temporal, contingent and changing entities, essentially dependent on particular normative authorities. It also brings some theoretical gains. It makes more explicit the ontological relationship between legal systems and normative authorities, explains different ways in which legal systems depend on legal offices and the persons holding these offices, shows more precisely how social efficacy conditions the existence of legal systems, and reveals the essential connection between legal norms and the acts of their promulgation, derogation, and interpretation of their linguistic formulations.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Pravo

POVEZANOST RADA