Being the transnational flow of legal standards an undeniable fact, the real question is about the conceptual frame, able to encompass the new symptoms, and to explain them in a hopefully consistent way. The project of an International Multilingual Archive (ALST) in the field of science and law is presented as a laboratory bench: an experimental confined field where to observe interactions and spontaneous ways of action within the transnational science and law domain.

The research focuses on the relationship between normativity, law, and evolution of culture: legal normativity is represented as a cognitive trait allowing a temporal displacement useful for contemporaneous considerations of temporally detached realities, coupled with the trust in what ought to be. The mix-up between reality and representation in the first cave paintings allowed the hormones that regulate the trusting behavior at the brain level, to increase individual cooperative behaviors, leading to the introduction of egalitarian rules in sharing the prey, stabilizing the cooperation in the group and enabling culture to evolve.

The whole epistemological enterprise is thought to be reduced to strict dichotomies of foundationalism versus coherentism. Is this rivalry tenable? In the first part, the paper practices such a distinction with particular reference to theories of law and, by taking the figure of the idealized judge drawn by Dworkin, Hercules, into special account, sketches out some common features of coherence legal theories. In the second part, the paper explores the very general idea of defeasible reasoning as a related avenue of investigation that corresponds to the various difficulties to which foundational and coherence legal theories are exposed.

The analysis of the origins of the sense of justice pursued in the paper revolves around the distinction between the rudimentary and the genuine sense of justice. It is argued that only the rudimentary sense of justice is a biological adaptation; that thereby the genuine sense of justice cannot be explained on purely biological grounds; and that the rudimentary sense of justice is «Janus-faced» – rational-emotional in character, as it is constrained greed plus a bundle of emotions. The paper also presents two ways in which the genuine sense of justice can develop out of its rudimentary form.

The principle of proportionality is the balance between too much and too little. It isolated itself at the beginning already, not only from purpose, which is self-sufficient, but also from the medium, which is blind and obedient. The most important is just the question, how can one obtain the right balance between rights and legal obligations, goods and cost or between purpose and means. The principle of proportionality must consider and make sure that all rights and obligations are correlative.

Based on a recent idea of the German government, the costs of the Internet are going to be included in payments. This indicates the thinking that this could be an important first step for creating more justice in education. Therefore it is necessary not only to have access to this kind of information but also to have the competency to use it, as a computer and the access to the Internet itself do not make any difference regarding learning (Clark, 1994). Regarding these aspects, it is not merely the possession of Internet access, which is important for the educational justice, but rather the competency, or the actual use of the Internet.

The paper deals with the problem of the relation between factor-based reasoning and teleological reasoning in legal balancing. The basic types of value judgments employed in legal argumentation are identified. The problem of legal balancing is commented upon from the perspective of ideas if corrective and distributive justice. I argue that it is possible to distinguish three functions of factor-based reasoning with regard to legal teleology: approximating function, constraining function and determining function. Several types of argument schemes concerning factors and values are presented and discussed.

Für uns stehen der Mensch und sein Ungerechtigkeitsempfinden im Zentrum der nachfolgenden Betrachtung. Gerechtigkeit sehen wir als einen sekundären Begriff an. Wir weisen nach, dass diese facettenreicher ist als die klassische, auf ARISTOTELES und AQUIN basierte Definition; ferner, dass auch quantitative Aspekte, Maße und Metriken bedeutsam sind. Durch eine Verallgemeinerung des Gleichheitsgedankens gelangen wir zu dem Invarianzprinzip. Mit dessen Hilfe lässt sich die allgemeine kultur- und generationenübergreifende Form der Gerechtigkeit darstellen. Fügt man zu diesem Prinzip noch die eigentliche Dynamik, das Ungerechtigkeitsempfinden und die Wertschätzung des Lebens, hinzu, erhalten wir die Basis für eine Geometrie der Gerechtigkeit.

Legal positivism should be defined by the two theses of the conceptual separation of law and morals and of the social sources of law, the second implying the first. The separation thesis stays and falls with the social sources thesis. According to inclusive legal positivism in a rule of law state the validity of a law may depend on its compatibility with critical morality or ethics. Ethics may be critical of a law, despite all social facts relevant to the validity of such a law. In such a case legal positivism must retire the social sources thesis, because of the way the law is socially understood as ethically justified. So legal positivism remains coherent. It is not self-defeated, but in this case it is self-effacing.

This article seeks, on one hand, to discuss the relevance of the fact/law distinction to the causal inquiry in law and, on the other hand, to discuss how can be sustained the fact causality/legal causality distinction and if it is necessary to give greater importance to one or another of these elements.

Ist es möglich oder erstrebenswert moralische und dennoch emotionslose Militärroboter zu konstruieren? Durch die deonitsche Logik, bzw. die sog. Modallogik ist uns ein Instrument an die Hand gegeben eine verwobene sozialweltliche und materialweltliche Kausalstruktur möglicher Folgen aufzuzeigen. Der hier dargelegte Vergleich kann hilfreich sein, neue Technologien in den bekannten Rechtsdiskurs zu stellen.

Lassen sich Fragen der Moral durch die Anwendung des Gesetzes der Großen Zahlen klären? Oder birgt der Versuch den Populismus (Referendum) in die praktische (Rechts-) Philosophie durch das Etikett des Empirismus einzuführen auch Gefahren? Und wo liegen die Grenzen und Möglichkeiten empirischer Ansätze in der Philosophie; oder anders gesagt, können tausende Ameisen und Schwärme von Fischen und Menschen sich nicht auch täuschen und was sagt dieses Bestreben letztlich über die Fristigkeit und Modeerscheinung von moralischen Grundsätzen aus?

The paper starts with a short summary of the work done so far by the author on this topic by pointing out the necessity to overcome the question of guilt as a decision factor. Then by the example of (sexual) child abuse the concept of shared responsibility as replacement is introduced and specified. The paper closes with a suggestion of practical measures that are able to leave a sustainable impact on necessary changes of social structures and make a contribution to the goal of general prevention.

This paper deals with the question of guilt as one important decision factor for modern legal systems. First of all a short look on the Solomonic Judgment will point out the importance of considering a systemic point of view. Then the impacts of the integration of the question of guilt as decision factor for conflict resolutions are highlighted, considering different human relations on different social levels. The question of guilt always becomes a fertilizer of escalation. This will lead back to the modern legal systems and the necessity to overcome the question of guilt, respectively to overcome a personalizing point of view.

Is it possible to iterate iterations of modalities, and does it make sense? Can we give a valid juridical interpretation of such a scheme?

This article sketches some elements of modal logic, on the basis of a logical game which was created by Hughes and Cresswell. Several variants of these games are determined by the different relations of perception among the participants (which «worlds» are represented). It will be discussed, why an obvious variation of the game, in which no self-perception exists, is tacitly omitted by both the authors. A missing variant is added because it just makes it possible to conduct a structural analysis for the important social phenomenon of the acknowledgement relation.