The Enigma of Authority
Freiburger Vorträge zur Staatswissenschaft und Rechtsphilosophie
- Datum: 21.05.2025
- Uhrzeit: 18:15 - 20:00
- Vortragender: Prof. Dr. Alexander Somek (Universität Wien)
- Alexander Somek is a professor of legal philosophy in the law faculty of the University of Vienna. Previously, he held (until 2015) the Charles E. Floete Chair at the University of Iowa College of Law and was a visiting professor at Princeton University and the London School of Economics. He was a Law and Public Affairs fellow at Princeton in the academic year 2012–2013 and a fellow of the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study in 2007–2008. His major publications in English include Knowing What the Law Is (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2021); The Legal Relation: Legal Theory after Legal Positivism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); The Cosmopolitan Constitution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Engineering Equality: An Essay on European Antidiscrimination Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Individualism: An Essay on the Authority of the European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). He is currently working on a book titled The Constitution of the Legal Relation: A Pragmatist Approach to Law. For more information, see www.somek.org.
- Ort: Freiburg, Fürstenbergstr. 19
- Raum: Seminarraum (F 113) | Gäste sind herzlich eingeladen; Anmeldung erbeten
- Gastgeber: MPI-CSL in Kooperation mit dem Institut für Staatswissenschaft & Rechtsphilosophie der Universität Freiburg
- Kontakt: c.hillemanns@csl.mpg.de
From Thomas Hobbes to Joseph Raz philosophical accounts of authority have struggled to accommodate its dependence on doing the right thing. The delivery of substantively defensible results remains relevant, even in the case of Hobbes, despite authority’s pre-emptive effect. While we have duties, if someone has authority over us, simply because the relevant person or institution has laid these down for us, the authority is rooted in a status that can be lost if the authority does not deliver substantively appealing results.
The lecture would like to explore this enigma and to demonstrate why the relational approach to law promises to overcome an persistent perplexity.
- Externe Gäste – Bitte melden Sie Ihre Teilnahme an bei Carolin Hillemanns: c.hillemanns@csl.mpg.de.