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The rule of law, once widely embraced and emulated, now faces serious threats to its viability. To get our bearings we must return to first principles. Law’s Rule: The Nature, Value, and Viability of the Rule of Law articulates and defends a coherent, comprehen­sive, and compelling conception of the rule of law and defends it against serious challenges to its intelligibility, relevance, and normative force. In this lecture, Postema will sketch the basic outlines of this conception and the values it serves. The rule of law’s ambition, he will argue, is to provide protection and recourse against the arbitrary exercise of power using the distinctive tools of the law. Law provides a bulwark of protection, a bridle on the powerful, and a bond constituting and holding together the polity and giving public expression to an ideal mode of association. Two principles immediately follow from this core: sovereignty of law, demanding that those who exercise ruling power govern with law and that law governs them, and equality in the eyes of the law, demanding that law’s protection extend to all who are bound by it. Animating law’s rule, the ethos of fidelity commits all members of the political community to take responsibility for holding each other accountable under the law. The moral foundation of this demanding ideal lies in a commitment to common membership of each person in this community, recognizing their freedom, dignity, and status as peers. The lecture will consider the relationship between democracy, human rights, and the rule of law and will conclude with thoughts on some of the most serious threats to the viability of law’s rule. [mehr]

Der Vortrag wird den Kern eines Buches wiedergeben, an dem Dietmar von der Pfordten schon sehr lange schreibt. Um die Natur des Rechts zu verstehen, ist es erforderlich, drei Ebenen der Abstraktion zu berücksichtigen: [mehr]

The lecture pursues two goals. First, Christian Bumke aims to compare how German legal doctrine and a pluralistic approach, known as the “New Private Law Theory” in the USA, can be used to think about and work with the law. Bumke will argue that, while there are considerable differences between the two, they can be understood as two variants of the same general approach towards legal scholarship, which he calls “conceptual legal scholarship”. His second goal consists in developing a reflection on methodol­ogy. For this purpose, he examines the differences within con­cep­tual legal scholarship. He wishes to show that very different academic activities are pursued both within legal doctrine and New Private Law scholarship. Bumke will make a distinction between two different types of conceptual legal scholarship. On the one hand, there are approaches that aim to explain a certain legal phenomenon; on the other hand, one finds approaches that aim to understand the law’s normative content. He will argue that differentiating between the two perspectives is important because they respond to different expectations and have to conform to different standards. [mehr]

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In ei­nem Lei­t­ur­teil zum Be­weis­maß hat der BGH 1970 aus­ge­führt, dass für die rich­ter­li­che Über­zeu­gung ein »Grad von Ge­wiss­heit« ge­for­dert sei, der un­ter­halb ei­ner »von al­len Zwei­feln frei­en Über­zeu­gung« lie­gen mag, aber über ei­ne bloß »an Si­cher­heit gren­zen­de Wahr­schein­lich­keit« hin­aus­geht. Ers­te­res for­de­re das Be­weis­recht nicht, Letz­te­res rei­che nicht aus (BGHZ 53, 245 ff.). Aus erkennt­nis­theo­re­ti­scher Sicht ist klä­rungs­be­dürf­tig, ob in die­sen en­gen Kor­ri­dor noch ein doxas­ti­scher Zu­stand hin­ein­passt. Im BGH-Ur­teil ist von der »Über­zeu­gung«, der »Wahr­heit ei­ner Behauptung« und dem er­for­der­li­chen »Grad an Ge­wiss­heit«, die Rede, aber der Be­griff des Wis­sens, in dem die­se Ele­men­te zu­sam­men­flie­ßen und auf­ein­an­der be­zo­gen wer­den, wird ver­mie­den. In der Er­kennt­nis­theo­rie ist um­strit­ten, ob die un­auf­heb­ba­re mensch­li­che Fehl­bar­keit mit der An­nah­me zu­sam­men­passt, dass Men­schen Wis­sen er­lan­gen kön­nen. Der Vor­trag skizziert die Grund­zü­ge ei­nes fal­li­bi­lis­ti­schen Wis­sens­be­griffs und ver­gleicht die Her­aus­for­de­rung, einen an­ge­mes­se­nen Kor­ri­dor für das Be­weis­maß zu spe­zi­fi­zie­ren, mit der er­kennt­nis­theo­re­ti­schen Her­aus­for­de­rung, die mensch­li­che Irr­tums­an­fäl­lig­keit mit dem Wis­sens­an­spruch zu ver­ein­ba­ren. [mehr]