Research

But many of these beliefs and presuppositions have turned out to be either false or hotly disputed by science. In any modern democracy, people "freely and deliberately" elect their representatives. Parliament translates the "will" of the people into law. All laws are published so that everyone "knows" what they require. Judges "make decisions based on the law", thus implementing the will of the people in individual cases. Punishment is meted out only to criminals who have "willingly" broken the law, “knowing” in advance the legal consequences of their criminal actions.

All of these are key ideas in contemporary legal systems, and all of them are deeply intertwined with (potentially problematic) folk-psychological assumptions about the workings of the minds of various actors within the legal system. An important task for legal theory in the 21st century is to discuss and critique these assumptions, combining analytical approaches to the philosophy of law with empirical approaches. This shift in the study of law correlates, on the one hand, with the naturalisation project initiated by Quine and his critique of the analytic/synthetic distinction in the field of epistemology, which continues today in relation to all areas of the social sciences, and, on the other hand, with the emergence of so-called experimental philosophy.

Beyond individual concepts and doctrines, such developments are also challenging the ontological and epistemological foundations of core

legal concepts. Debates surrounding ‘rights of nature’, for example, have highlighted the need to adjust our legal vocabularies to a multitude of new entities that cannot be identified with human individuals or collectives. Emergent technologies such as artificial intelligence, meanwhile, cannot neatly be categorized along the person/property or agent/object divide.

Such developments highlight an underlying problem with Western legal conceptual vocabularies and ontologies: they strongly rely on anthropocentric prerequisites, such as conceptions of autonomy, intentionality, self-determination, interests or dignity, focusing on human individuals and collectives, but are as such not capable to encompass agents beyond the human, whether in natural or artificial form.

The difficulties of adapting our legal conceptual apparatus and ontology to the challenges posed by more than human agency highlight the need to carefully and critically re-examine and reconfigure the anthropomorphic presuppositions underlying Western legal ontology. By employing philosophical reflection and insights from adjacent disciplines and approaches, this research stream seeks to rethink some of the crucial ontological presuppositions related to core legal concepts such as personhood, agency, responsibility, rights, or duties.

Its goals are firstly to understand how the assumptions behind notions of ‘nature’ in the ‘philosophies of nature’ and ‘natural sciences’ impact natural law, legal philosophy and political theory in Europe and beyond. In consequence, a second goal is to investigate ways to narrow the gap between the methods of legal reasoning and of scientific thinking. Finally, the stream seeks to critically analyse notions of the public good arising from shared ideas between political liberalism, political economy and natural sciences and investigate how these findings could contribute to a better governance of the global economy employing insights from moral and legal theory. 

Its study touches upon foundational aspects of legal thinking such as legal reasoning, legal interpretation, conceptual analysis of law, legal sociology, and the study of the underlying values of legal systems, among other topics.

Providing a comprehensive view of law’s normative power and normativity, in general, requires research in different philosophical areas. Political and moral philosophy provide insights into the nature of both values and reasons for action. Research in normative legal philosophy provides plausible answers to both theoretical and practical legally relevant questions.

This research stream encompasses scholarly works delving into the role of values in legal decision-making, political and moral dimensions of legal discourse, and normative research aiming at solving legal issues.

Issues such as intergenerational justice, the climate crisis, the development of AI, the emergence of so-called populist movements, the role of courts and their relationship with other institutions and civil society, are challenging three fundamental notions of the contemporary social contract: constitutionalism and its relationship with democracy, normativity, and subjectivity.

Challenges to the first notion - constitutionalism - place once again on the table the question whether contemporary liberal democracies are able to persist over time or, instead, contain within themselves the seeds of their own demise.

Tensions regarding the second notion question the meaning of normativity. Does normativity really exist as an objective reality, or is it a product of human imagination - or both? Moreover, normativity is strictly tied up with temporality and the possibility to conjure up different normativities and temporalities simultaneously, to use Koselleck's terminology.

The third key notion is challenged due to the rise of new subjectivities, be them future generations, AI, animals and plants, gender identity, etc. Questions of how such subjectivities operate in the public sphere are imminent. Whether or not this trend is leading towards a new definition of the 'human' and, as a result, of 'law as a human artefact' is also imminent.

These challenges will be addressed from an interdisciplinary perspective, combining legal and political theory, and constitutional law.

This research stream investigates how public authorities have facilitated markets and empowered private actors to engage in the commercial activities – and the other way around, how the integration of national, regional, and international markets has been a key driver for the harmonisation and convergence of different legal orders. It examines whether and how governments and private actors throughout history dealt with moral, social or planetary boundaries to economic activities: whether economic activities harm matters of social, political, and environmental concern. Research in this stream investigates, for example, the role of law in facilitating, curtailing, and providing access to markets. It examines whether and how the law can address economic disembedding from society.

Research in this stream typically draws on a range of different disciplines. Comparative legal historians could explore what lessons we can learn from the regulation of markets and economic actors in other countries in the past. Legal historians can help us understand how we got where we are today by exposing, for example, the ancient roots of commercial law or the origins of corporations. What role did corporations play in the past? Economists, for example, might ask how incentives of liability rules, private regulation, and market solutions can be used to prevent and compensate for harms caused by oil pollution, nuclear accidents, or natural disasters. This then leads to more philosophical questions: when and why should governments shape economies?