Publications

The Quest for Rights Ideal and Normative Dimensions

Edited by Massimo La Torre, Leone Niglia and Mart Susi

People on the Move – Migrants, Refugees, and Citizenship Rights (RT 1/2020)

Edited by Massimo La Torre

»People on the Move. Migrants, Refugees, and Citizenship Rights«: This special issue collects papers given at a conference convened at the University of Tallinn, Estonia, in February 2019 to discuss on migration and citizenship rights. »People are on the move« – this is an evidence from which the discussion took start. A mass of destitute people migrate both for economic and political reasons from the poor South of the world to the rich North. The question then is how to deal with this epochal movement of people and with their needs and rights. Is there a right for a migrant to have access to the country she will enter to? Is citizenship necessarily exclusive? Could belonging be conceived as a porose condition?

Ratio Juris Journal Volume 33, Issue 1

In October 2018 at the School of Governance, Law and Society of the Tallinn University, Estonia, a group a distinguished scholars met to discuss Professor Robert Alexy’s philosophy of law. This doctrine was there challenged especially as regards two of its basic tenets. On the one side, his view of an ideal dimension of law was critically considered from diverse perspectives, in particular by putting in question its analytical and empirical fruitfulness. An ideal dimension – it was claimed — is more than just given by the morality of law, and its analytical framework might be doubted to be just consisting in a dualistic alternative, as the one rendered through the choice between facts and norms. On the other side, the core of Alexy’s concept of law was put under critical scrutiny, that is, law’s claim to correctness, which is meant to offer the searched for bridge connecting law and morality in a necessary, conceptual way. Correctness — it was argued by critics –is not yet morality, and not every legal system could and would claim to offer a general ethical cover to its provisions.  A final attack was then directed against Alexy’s theory of legal principles as optimization commands. As a matter of fact, Alexy himself has abandoned the view according to which optimization commands could be applied by balancing, and has consequently revised his previous notion of principles. These are now seen as commands to be optimized rather that commands to optimize, and indeed as an “ideal ought” that is open to contradictory performances. This revision however renders the distinction between rules and principles, which is maintained, a too baroque construction, and its novel configuration might be considered – it is argued – as not much more than an ad hoc reaction to fundamental criticism.  Professor Alexy in his reply has tried to parry such blows to his jurisprudential system. This debate touched some of the most central issues of philosophy of law and enrichingly contributed to the controversy on the concept of law and the essentials of legal reasoning.