Jusletter IT

e-mail version

29 June 2011

Dear Readers,

After a longer period of birth, the magazine Jusletter IT enters the stage of the ongoing production of four issues per year. As editors, we are pleased to present the June issue focusing on «Quantitative Aspects of Justice and Fairness: Proportionality and Justice – QAJF».

Of course, institutions are an important backbone of our society, but finally an individual has to make a decision and to take the (psychic and real) burden of its consequences. Such decisions are based on different measures specifically coined by any culture and generation. quantius.org working group aims at studying such measures and foundations of proportionality and quantitative justice and fairness and to contribute to a better cross-cultural understanding.

As a journal, Jusletter IT can be considered as a «spin-off» of the International Legal Informatics Symposium IRIS, the biggest related conference in Central Europe. To date, three conference volumes have appeared in Jusletter IT, and the other conference proceedings will be completed gradually.

Jusletter IT is an electronic journal and complies with the trend to relocate text collections in the «cloud», with the main advantage of being always available.

Like the IRIS conference, Jusletter IT shall represent legal informatics as broad as possible. Located at the interchange of law and computer science, the fullness of thought as well as the practice should find its space in this journal. The three major themes will be technical legal informatics, IT law and legal theory. In detail, the following topics are considered: legal information, search techniques for lawyers, e-discovery, advanced applications in law, e-government, e-democracy, e-justice, electronic regulation, knowledge-based process management in administrative networks, open government, e-taxation and finance online, e-procurement, e-learning, privacy and data security, intellectual property, e-commerce, telecommunications law, IT compliance, theory of IT law, legal theory, visualization of law (or multisensory law) and science fiction and utopias.

Jusletter IT is designed as an international journal, and therefore it includes at least contributions in the languages German, English and French.

There is no limitation to specific countries. We welcome contributions from all legal systems, with particular emphasis on the European legal systems, and here again on those in the German-speaking world.

Jusletter IT wants to be the platform for electronic proceedings of the main scientific legal informatics  conferences. The technical solution provides maximum availability and significant cost advantages.

Discourse and scientific exchange are very important to us. For this reason, university staff and students is granted free access to Jusletter IT on a so-called campus license. We are pleased to invited universities to register for this service.

The IT law section will be significantly expanded in the coming months. Each issue should contain a summary of key events and documents in the countries Germany, Switzerland and Austria. «Big issues» will be given appropriate attention.

Every beginning is difficult and this is particularly true for magazines in new areas of law with an international focus. If you have an idea for a publication or currently working on a publication project in IT and law, or have completed such, please send us your contributions and ideas.

We are currently building a large team of editors representing both the entire scope and depth and ensuring that reports and analysis of latest developments are found in best quality in Jusletter IT.

Having said this, we hope you enjoy reading this issue!

 

    • Amedeo Santosuosso

      The disaggregation of law into elementary particles and the interactions among them

      The Archive ALST as a laboratory bench

      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. read on
      • Category: Short Articles
      • Region: Italy
      • Field of law: Legal Theory
      • Collection: Q-Justice 2011
    • Francesco Romeo

      Some aspects of the evolution of legal norms in the Lower Pleistocene

      A quantitative approach to normativity

      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. read on
      • Category: Short Articles
      • Region: Italy
      • Field of law: Legal Theory
      • Collection: Q-Justice 2011
    • Alessandro Serpe

      Epistemic models for justification and law

      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. read on
      • Category: Short Articles
      • Region: Italy
      • Field of law: Legal Theory
      • Collection: Q-Justice 2011
    • Wojciech Zaluski

      On the Sense of Justice from the Evolutionary Perspective

      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. read on
      • Category: Short Articles
      • Region: Poland
      • Field of law: Legal Theory
      • Collection: Q-Justice 2011

    • The Principle of Proportionality

      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. read on
      • Category: Short Articles
      • Region: Slovenia
      • Field of law: Legal Theory
      • Collection: Q-Justice 2011
    • Vera Gehlen-Baum

      The role of the Internet in educational justice

      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. read on
      • Category: Short Articles
      • Region: Germany
      • Field of law: Legal Theory
      • Collection: Q-Justice 2011
    • Michał Araszkiewicz

      Values and Factors in Legal Balancing

      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. read on
      • Category: Short Articles
      • Region: Poland
      • Field of law: Legal Theory
      • Collection: Q-Justice 2011
    • Rainhard Z. Bengez

      Proportionalität und Quantitative Gerechtigkeit: Eine Einführung und Hinführung

      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. read on
      • Category: Short Articles
      • Region: Germany
      • Field of law: Legal Theory
      • Collection: Q-Justice 2011
    • José de Sousa e Brito

      Legal positivism: a self-effacing theory

      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. read on
      • Category: Short Articles
      • Region: Portugal
      • Field of law: Legal Theory
      • Collection: Q-Justice 2011
    • Rui Soares Pereira

      Challenging the «cause-in-fact» / «cause-in-law» dichotomy

      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. read on
      • Category: Short Articles
      • Region: Portugal
      • Field of law: Legal Theory
      • Collection: Q-Justice 2011
    • Lothar Philipps

      Modale und deontische Logik, autonome Kampfroboter

      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. read on
      • Category: Short Articles
      • Region: Germany
      • Field of law: Legal Theory
      • Collection: Q-Justice 2011
    • Lothar Philipps

      Iustitia distributiva – ein Fall für die Experimentalphilosophie

      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? read on
      • Category: Short Articles
      • Region: Germany
      • Field of law: Legal Theory
      • Collection: Q-Justice 2011
    • Markus Fath

      Shared Responsibility

      How to find Just Sentences for Social Structures

      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. read on
      • Category: Short Articles
      • Region: Germany
      • Field of law: Legal Theory
      • Collection: Q-Justice 2011
    • Markus Fath

      The Responsibility to overcome the Question of Guilt

      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. read on
      • Category: Short Articles
      • Region: Germany
      • Field of law: Legal Theory
      • Collection: Q-Justice 2011
    • Lothar Philipps

      A Note on Relations in Law

      Is it possible to iterate iterations of modalities, and does it make sense? Can we give a valid juridical interpretation of such a scheme? read on
      • Category: Short Articles
      • Region: Germany
      • Field of law: Legal Theory
      • Collection: Q-Justice 2011
    • Lothar Philipps

      A Social Interpretation of Possible Worlds

      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. read on
      • Category: Short Articles
      • Region: Germany
      • Field of law: Legal Theory
      • Collection: Q-Justice 2011

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