HARD AND TRAGIC CASES, PRINCIPLES AND THE LIMITS OF LAW

Coordinators and Chairs:

MANUEL ATIENZA (University of Alicante)
JOS MANUEL AROSO LINHARES (University of Coimbra)

In a limit-situation such as our own, whilst rethinking Laws place in its

specific connection with peace (one of our congress thematic cores), it
seems indispensable to return to the counterpoint easy cases/ hard cases
and to the difficulties (if not paradoxes) that its specific pragmatic
engenders, as well as to the possibilities opened up by the consideration of
a specification of hard cases, the one which allows us to acknowledge the
so-called tragic cases. This workshop aims rethinking this pragmatic (and
its methodological projections) in their direct connection with the
experience of principles and the corresponding legal systems
representation this one submitted to the multiplication of concepts or
conceptions of Law which the so-called academic house (on a certain meta-
dogmatic level) has been producing in recent decades. Is the tension
between the binomial easy cases/hard cases and the category legal system
(or the reflection which critically witnesses it) a productive one, whilst
understanding the pragmatic of plurality which characterizes contemporary
legal thinking? Are the difficulties and paradoxes associated to the
binomial easy/hard precisely the same when we explore different legal
methodological trends and traditions, namely those which correspond on
the one hand to Holmes and Harts legacies (involving so different
possibilities as those explored by Law and Economics and Law and
Literature, by Critical Legal Scholars and Inclusive Legal Positivists) and
on the other hand the so-called standard theory of argumentation
(Alexy, MacCormick, Aarnio, Peczenik), this one invoking Wrblewskis
legacy (the analytical reconstitution of argumentation as a process of
justification, with different horizontal or vertical levels)? Should the
critical denouncing of those difficulties and paradoxes, as well as the
overcoming of an open area concept of discretion, involving a certain
community of principles (Dworkin) or a specific dialectics between the
legal system and the adjudicating problem (Castanheira Neves), open up
the path to an effective refusal of the binomial easy/hard? Does not the
experience of tragic cases, whilst hard cases with no correct answer,
demand the consideration of another decisive issue, the one which,
experiencing Laws cultural and civilizational identity, pays attention to an
authentic problem of limits (the limits of Law and its practical normative
world)? These are some of the questions which we are challenged to
consider.

Abstracts must be submitted to the coordinators of the

Special Workshop by e-mail at:
manuelatienzarodriguez@gmail.com, jmarolinh@gmail.com.

Accepted languages are: English, French, German

Spanish and Portuguese.

Deadline for submitting abstracts to the coordinators:

12 May 2017