ABSTRACT. The recent Ukrainian moment of truth refutes not only Western post-cold-war dreams of an eternal world order built on democracy, human rights and capitalist flourishing (the liberal script in its iconic ‘end of history’-form), but questions the commensurability of political values around the world and the idea of one universal conception of law altogether. At the same time, unseen global challenges (climate change, pandemics, AI) require common legal solutions. Yet also current international law is often accused to spring from ‘Western’ hegemony disregarding ‘Eastern’ or ‘Southern’ world views.

Notwithstanding frequent tactical use of such a narrative, ‘comparative philosophy’ as well as empirical ‘moral psychology’ acknowledge diverging intellectual traditions (Western, East and South Asian, African, Arabic, South American). The idea of ‘global philosophy’ is to integrate comparative findings from different traditions into a meta-framework for global thinking. It aims to inquire in the possibility of general elements of thought for a meaningful global understanding avoiding theoretical imperialism.

Although the role of law is crucial to all modern societies, there is not much inquiry in comparative LEGAL philosophy. There is of course a long tradition of ‘comparative law’ (mainly private law) including legal methodology and socio-economic theory (e.g. legal origin research). And abstract philosophical inquiry in the pure form of legal norms may to some extend transcend cultural differences. But are there also common structures for substantial legal argumentation and balancing around the world? Could and do we share legal ground values (like e.g. ‘security’, ‘freedom’ or ‘equality’)? Could and do we mutually understand such basic legal reasons correctly?

This inquiry collects comparative approaches from different disciplines into legal-political values around the world (e.g. comparative philosophy, moral psychology, comparative political economy) and attempts to trace common conceptual structures and possible metatheoretical backings for substantial legal background reasoning. It outlines a ‘discoursive grammar’ of basic legal reasons and applies it to legal argumentation in different cultures. The hope would be that such a structural approach could bridge ‘Western’, ‘Eastern’ and ‘Southern’ normative traditions. The goal of ‘basic legal reasons’ is not to universally justify some specific legal culture (like Western liberal human rights understanding), but to open a reflexive space for intercultural normative dialogue and global law.

ABSTRACT. This paper aims to clarify an intercultural foundation of cosmopolitan hope. Since Diogenes identified himself as cosmopolitēs, cosmopolitanism has significantly influenced the intellectual history of human beings. Because all human beings must cooperate in solidarity to deal with the many issues of globalized contemporary society, we can say that the cosmopolitanism that justifies and motivates such practical attitudes becomes increasingly significant. However, at the same time, globalization reveals plurality and heterogeneity of cultures and makes it unclear how cosmopolitanism can be universally accepted beyond various cultural contexts. Considering this paradoxical circumstance of the globalized society, this paper attempts to answer two questions. The first is about an intercultural foundation of cosmopolitan hope, “In the globalizing world, where can we discover an intercultural foundation that cosmopolitan hope can rely on?” The second is about its permissibility and rationality. To rephrase Kant’s question, “May we hope for cosmopolitan order?”

To address these questions, I will examine two possible approaches: the Overlapping Consensus Approach (which follows Charles Taylor's endeavor to jusitify human rights) and the Constructivist Approach (which follows Rainer Forst’s critical constructivism). The former maintains, on the one hand, we expect that hopes expressed in various forms within dominant comprehensive doctrines or intellectual traditions of different cultures will overlap, and then we will discover the intercultural foundation of cosmopolitan hope in this overlapping consensus. On the other hand, the latter argues that the foundation of cosmopolitan hope is found in the normative requirements obtained by reconstructing our moral justification praxis.

After pointing out some problems with the Overlapping Consensus Approach, especially from the perspective of the characteristics of Japanese thought argued by Masao Maruyama in an article titled “Japanese Thought,” I defend the Constructivist Approach while maintaining that Forst’s critical constructivism needs to be supplemented by the Unification Requirement that a theoretical reason and a practical reason must be unified. I contend that the Construction Approach supplemented by the Unification Requirement can solve all the problems involved with the intercultural foundation of cosmopolitan hope and that we can discover it within the Unification Requirement. Furthermore, with reference to Darrel Moellendorf, Claudia Blöser, and Titus Stahl’s research on hope, I argue that the Unification Requirement explains why our continuous commitment to cosmopolitan hope is permissible and rational because it functions as an internal hope-maker which gives us reason to hope for a cosmopolitan order and contributes to the constitution of practical identity.

ABSTRACT. Research grounded in evolutionary theory holds the promise of explaining our moral intuitions in terms of the fitness benefits they conferred on our ancestors over time. This research suggests a view of morality as a set of reliably developing psychological instincts that are often universal, but not objective in the metaphysical sense. In this paper, I argue that this research may shed new light on the centuries-old debate surrounding natural law. By providing a scientifically plausible explanation for the moral intuitions at the heart of natural law theory, this research both (1) accounts for the emergence and persistence of the belief that a natural law exists, and (2) undermines one of the core tenants of natural law theory: that laws must necessarily express our intuitive sense of morality.

ABSTRACT.    The Development of Commons Thought in Late 20th Century Japan

Nao Saito, Fumino Iwakuma, Shihoko Nemoto, Kazumasa Oda, Midori Wakamori

  In the second half of the 20th century, Japan experienced rapid economic growth and at the same time was forced to deal with the various adverse effects of capitalism in terms of policy and ideology. One adverse effect was that the emphasis on economic growth through mass production and consumption led to environmental destruction, violations of the human rights of the socially vulnerable, and changes in the customs and morals of the community. At the same time, Japan, while actively adopting Western thought, questioned whether it was effective in solving its own cultural and problematic issues and developed its own original thought to resolve these issues. This session focuses on the debate over the commons’ ideas.

  Comons (common goods) are a philosophy of sharing goods beyond the private property system. Unlike public goods, which governments regard as subject to redistribution based on market failure, commons are often based on joint management of those who benefit from the good. Such a philosophy differs from John Rawls and other Western theories of justice, which are centered on government redistributive policies, in that it requires co-management by the parties involved. It has also developed as an ideology that incorporates Marxism but also incorporates the regional characteristics of Japan. In this session, we clarify how the commons’ philosophy responds to the adverse effects of capitalism. Specifically, we examine how the idea of the commons can suggest solutions to environmental problems such as pollution, problems of labor and exclusion in capitalism, and problems of local autonomy based on regionalism. Through this examination, we also clarify how economic thinkers in Japan in the latter half of the 20th century adopted Western ideas and applied them to develop their original ideas.

  The session consisted of five presenters. Each presenter will focus on a thinker who is indispensable in discussing Japanese commons thought in the latter half of the 20th century, analyze their thoughts from the perspective of the commons, and evaluate their originality. These thinkers are Yoshiro Tamanoi, Teruo Ichiraku, Yuichi Shionoya, Hirofumi Uzawa, and Hitoshi Imamura. Their common characteristic is that they introduced Western thought to Japan through translation and other means in the early stages of their research; however, in later years, they developed their own original thought that overcame Western ideas. In doing so, this session will clarify the proposals they made from the commons’ viewpoint in response to the social problems that accompanied the development of capitalism in Japan. The following is a summary of each presentation:

  The first presentation by Fumino Iwakuma addresses Tamanoi's thoughts. The title is “Ecology and Commons in Yoshiro Tamanoi.” Yoshiro Tamanoi (1918-1985), under the influence of the Marxist economist Kozo Uno, started out by studying economic theory and the history of economics, but later, influenced by K. Polanyi and I. Ilyich. He translated these thinkers' works into Japanese and gradually shifted his research interests to ecology and regionalism. In 1984, he was involved in establishing the Entropy Society of Japan. Tamanoi's works on ecology and regionalism include "Economy and Ecology: The Road to Economics in a Broader Sense," (Tamanoi 1978) and "The Idea of Regionalism," (Tamanoi 1979). Tamanoi's works made an important academic contribution to Japanese economic thought in the sense that they were an attempt to renew socio-economic theory from the viewpoints of human nature, material metabolism, and community, while introducing an ecological perspective to Japan at an early stage. This report summarizes Tamanoi's contributions from the commons’ perspective, and examines their contemporary and historical significance.

  In the second presentation, Shihoko Nemoto clarifies the ideas of Teruo Ichiraku, who is positioned as an advocate of one of the practical activities of the ethical economy through small-scale organizations. Its title is “Teruo Ichiraku's Moral Economy through face-to-face relationship.” Teruo Ichiraku (1906-1994) advocated an ethical and economic philosophy based on cooperative thought, and small-scale organisations through mutual understanding and reciprocity between farmers and consumers, and aimed to realise a 'fair society' to improve the farmers’ economic status (cf. Ichiraku 1984). Ichiraku's idea was derived from the fusion of the four thoughts, R. Owen's social reform and cooperative villages through morals and education, the F.W. Raiffeisen’s cooperative thought of ‘poor farmer relief on local community’ in German, 19th century, ‘family-oriented cooperativism’ in rural Japan, 1930s, and the organic agricultural movement based on ‘face-to-face relationship’ in Japan, 1970s. This presentation will evaluate Ichiraku's ideal of autonomous organization and the system for organic agricultural products as an association-type small ethical economy from a commons perspective.

  We then clarify the ideas of Yuichi Shionoya and Hirofumi Uzawa, who state that pollution and other problems of environmental destruction should be part of welfare policy. In doing so, we will show the relationship between government redistribution policies and the commons. First, in the third presentation, Nao Saito deals with the economic thought of Yuichi Shionoya. Its title is “Environmental Issues in Yuichi Shionoya's Economic Thought.”

  Yuichi Shionoya (1932-2015) was a thinker who constructed his own economic philosophy from the perspective of excellence, while incorporating John Rawls and other Western thought. The purpose of this presentation is to clarify how Yuichi Shionoya addressed pollution and environmental issues in the 1970s through his debates with Hirofumi Uzawa and Shigeto Tsuru. In "The Welfare Economy" (Shionoya 1973), Shionoya regarded the natural environment as a public good and pollution as an infringement of environmental rights held by society, and he positioned environmental conservation as part of the state's welfare policy. What is revealed through the controversy is Shionoya's foresight in linking welfare and the environment, and his limitation, which is the lack of partyhood in terms of the commons. While Shionoya opened a clue to the idea of the commons by recognizing the significance of the joint management of goods, he gave it only a negative significance in assisting the limits of redistributive policies. The latter limitation of Shionoya can be interpreted as having been overcome by Uzawa, who developed the idea of commons using his original concept of "social common capital.

  In the fourth presentation, Midori Wakamori addresses Uzawa’s thoughts. Its title is “Uzawa Hirofumi's Social Common Capital.” Hirofumi Uzawa (1928-2014) was a Japanese economist who studied under Kenneth Arrow at Stanford University and returned to Japan at the height of his reputation as a mathematical economist in the American Economic Association to develop his original concept of "social common capital”. This presentation reveals how Uzawa's ideas, which pointed out the limitations of Paul Samuelson and William Kapp's externality-based approach in his "The Social Cost of Automobiles" (Uzawa 1974), were formed through the context of exchanges and debates with Kenichi Miyamoto, Shigeto Tsuru and Yuichi Shionoya, who were working on pollution issues since the 1960s. In the 1980s and the 1990s, Uzawa illuminated healthcare, education, and the natural environment as objects of analysis for “social overhead capital” and came to position "social common capital" as a vision of 21st century affluence that transcends capitalism and socialism.

  Finally, in the fifth presentation, Kazumasa Oda will clarify Hitoshi Imamura’s thoughts, who, through his studies of Baudrillard, Marx, and others, critically examined how we are positioned as economic agents in the age of mass production and consumption, based on the assumption of private property. Its title is “Gifts and Commons in Hitoshi Imamura.”

  Hitoshi Imamura (1942-2007) published numerous translations and works from the 1980s to the 2000s. While vigorously introducing contemporary French thought to Japan, he theoretically and philosophically drew out the contemporary implications of Marx's thought from his unique perspective of "exclusion (Imamura 1992). In the 2000s, he systematically interpreted the contemporary implications of Marx's thought from the perspective of "exchange" (Imamura 2000). Imamura then summarized the core of his previous research in his main work, "Philosophy of Sociality" (Imamura 2007). This work is a philosophical examination of human beings as "gifted beings" from an original perspective. In this report, we organize Imamura's contribution from the perspective of the commons (common goods) and examine its contemporary and historical significance.

  As described above, this session will follow the development of commons thought in Japan in the latter half of the 20th century. By clarifying its contemporary significance, we will attempt to make effective proposals regarding the social problems we face today. In recent years, environmental problems have become more serious on the one hand, and the Internet of Things (IoT) has been developed. In light of these social conditions, the idea of the commons is receiving renewed attention. According to Jeremy Rifkin, the development of the IoT will enable the spread of the digital commons, and the sharing of green infrastructure using the IoT could address environmental issues (Rifkin 2014, Rifkin 2019). However, the thought that supports such institutions is not yet fully established. We believe that this session will help build a thought that supports the current policy recommendations of the Commons.

ABSTRACT. The United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention is conceived to be a key international document which aims to protect those who flee their country of origin from a well-founded fear of persecution. Since the convention was adopted 149 countries became signatories of the convention. Understandably, the convention, to some extent, provides a set of practical and clear guidelines to protect those individuals who meet the definition of a refugee as outlined in Article One of the Convention. However, the convention can also be criticised for its silence about or inadequate attention to some other issues surrounding forced migration. To further elucidate the convention does not consider forced migration resulting from environmental disasters, the impact and use of online technologies, extreme poverty due to state corruption, gender-based violence including those against the members of LGBTQI community, etc. To that end, the paper aims to consider the eastern and western prospectives of justice and human rights within the framework of forced migration. Then the paper will investigate The 1951 Refugee Convention’s compatibility with these notions in the light of the increasing security related concerns in the countries that are member states to the convention. Consequently, the paper will discuss the recent changes in the UK’s immigration law namely the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, The UK-Rwanda Asylum Agreement and the proposed Illegal Immigration Bill in order to find out whether the UK’s immigration law is still compatible with the 1951 Refugee Convention. The examples taken from the recent changes in the UK’s immigration law will be used to consider different stages involved in consideration of the application for a refugee status from the point of entry to either admission or deportation of a refugee. The discussion will also, within a legal framework, include the consideration of social and economic implications associated with the integration of a refugee into the host society. Furthermore, the discussion will look into the role of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in situations involving non-compliance by the member-states to the 1951 Refugee Convention. Moreover, and in order to further evaluate the role of the convention in effective protection of refugees, the paper aims to explore alternative international legal documents that offer protection to refugees. To conclude the discussion, the paper will suggest the need to reform the 1951 Refugee Convention along with explaining the impact of the suggested reform on future of forced migration worldwide.

ABSTRACT. Nationalists are often supposed to be xenophobic. However, liberal nationalists claim that nationalism does not necessarily oppress personal freedom and welfare. Liberal nationalism consists of the combination of egalitarian liberalism and integrationist nationalism. On the one hand, egalitarian liberalism requires every individual in a society enjoy accessibility to an equal range of the context of choices. On the other hand, nationalism requires to integrate nation in certain ways. The ways of integration could be liberal or illiberal. For example, integrating nation into a single religion is illiberal. However, integrating nation into particular language(s) can be liberal. And liberal integrations of nation can be useful instruments of egalitarian liberalism. Because our sense of unity can activate our motivations to help each other. To achieve the ideals of egalitarian liberalism, governments implement many policies of welfare state. This requires taxpayers to help unanimous poor people in their society. It needs strong source of motivations. In this paper, I consider what would liberal nationalists say about immigration issues. How should society respond to immigrants? Societies have many reasons about how many immigrants to accept and what kinds of immigrants to accept. First, we can divide these reasons into deontologist and consequentialist. Deontologist reasons have their normative validity regardless of side-effects of accepting immigrants. Then, what kinds of deontologist reasons might we have? Subsistence of politically persecuted refugees or freedom of movement itself are basic human rights. On the other hand, what kinds of consequentialist reasons do we have? We might have the argument of security to reject certain kinds of immigrants. We may reject those who have the intention of terrorism or other crimes. Or we may put the limit of number of immigration during pandemic. We also have consequentialist reasons to accept immigrants. We may invite those who have skills which the society needs. This is a consideration of national interests. I never mean to ignore the importance of deontologist reasons nor globalist version of consequentialist reasons. However, in this paper, I examine the arguments of national interest strategies of liberal nationalism. I think each society has it own ability of integrating immigrants. Both of accepting immigrants over the limit of this ability and below it may spoil the society. Liberal nationalists must identify the precise location of this limit of integration ability of their own society. At the same time, they should make efforts to increase this ability of the society.

ABSTRACT. This paper juxtaposes the West’s Enlightenment law of hospitality as propounded by Kant to one of the East’s laws of hospitality, what this paper would call ‘Zo hospitality’, in the light of the refugee crisis brought about by the recent political upheaval in Myanmar. It attempts to explicate the lesser-known Zo concept of hospitality and unveil its unique role in addressing the plight of refugees crossing the Myanmar border to India. In Perpetual Peace and the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant enumerates the law of hospitality within the category of Public Right under the term cosmopolitan right. For Kant, hospitality is the right of a stranger not to be treated with hostility upon her arrival on another’s territory. Kant distinctively states that hospitality is a category of law, not philanthropy. The recent political upheaval in Myanmar resulted in a large influx of refugees from Myanmar to the North Eastern states of India. India is neither a signatory of the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention nor a party to international refugee protocols. Hence, it is not obligated to take in any refugees. However, the Zo people in the Indian state of Mizoram bordering Myanmar continue to provide aid, relief and shelter to the conflict victims from Myanmar who seek refuge in India. This phenomenon, the paper submits, is aptly explained by the term “Zo hospitality”. Zo hospitality, unlike Kant’s hospitality, is undergirded by the age-old practical philanthropic law called “tlawmngaihna.” Tlawmngaihna translates as the love of/for the less - ‘tlawm-less’; ‘ngaihna-philia’. Tlawmngaihna can be cultural, moral and, to an extent, political, but most of all, it is a practical concept. It is “tlawmngaihna” that propels Zo people to go out of their way and extend humanitarian aid to refugees from Myanmar even when the Indian state does not endorse any refugee policy. Benhabib (2003) observes that Kantian hospitality is inadequate to address issues such as refugees, migrants and asylum seekers because its guarantee lies with the state. The state can deny entry to any refugee. Zo hospitality goes beyond such law. Where enlightened hospitality of the West ends, Zo hospitality of the East begins. Considering a comprehensive approach to refugee treatment worldwide, this paper argues that the Kantian law of hospitality alone is inadequate. The plight of refugees can be better addressed in a world where Kantian law of hospitality meets Zo law of hospitality.

ABSTRACT. Liberal nationalists like David Miller frequently argue that nations are mainly the political cultures that provides one of the main contexts of our lives and constitutes moral bases of political obligation. However, if the nations are merely political cultures, they would not give a good reason for controlling migrants as members of nations likes because in many countries people do not share a singular nation as population of Ontario and Quebec do not. In short, nations as political cultures do not necessarily coincide with territories and for formation of nations the existence of territories is not only unnecessary but insufficient conditions. More promising way for liberal nationalists to provide the basis of discretionary immigration control is appealing the moral significance of states’ territorial jurisdictions. Margaret Moore argues that states’ territorial jurisdictions are indispensable for the people as collective agent to make self-determination. Territories are geographical domains where people express their will through the states’ institutions, and people are the collective agents the members of which treat other members as compatriots through engaging common projects. To clarify whether Moore’s argument is successful or not, we must identify the contents of common projects and the conditions for engaging them, for example, migrants’ linguistic competences or skills. However, Moore’s bases for restricting immigration are basically successful because they grasp our fundamental condition of living, that is, our need for good residential environments and good relationship with neighbors. In my paper I will explain the reasons of my diagnosis.

ABSTRACT. Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus is a fictional biography that describes how the Persian king Cyrus the Great became a world conqueror. The guidebook is historically significant because it has been claimed to have influenced the world conquests of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. Xenophon describes how Cyrus reforms the educational and legal system to pursue practical benefits. The reform seemed to be effective because Cyrus succeeded in building a great empire, but it soon decayed after his death. For this reason, scholars differ on whether Cyrus is a virtuous or a cautionary example, whether Xenophon admired or criticized imperialism. I will classify the interpretations of Xenophon's work and evaluate their credibility. Plato and Xenophon recognize the ambivalent nature of Cyrus’s politics because he is a triumphant world conqueror who tragically fails to educate his sons and build stable institutions. Thus, Xenophon not only glorifies the imperial politics of Cyrus but also reveals its problematic consequences. Xenophon shows how leaders overestimate their ability to predict the consequences of their decisions because of the tragic nature of life. This follows that the foundation of virtuous leadership is acknowledging one’s weaknesses and fallibilities.

ABSTRACT. According to Blackstone’s Ratio, it is better to let ten guilty people go free than let one innocent suffer. This has, in recent decades, been interpreted as a cautionary tale against miscarriages of justice and a demonstration of faith in the legal process.

This paper seeks to challenge the extent to which the modern common law criminal court can adhere to such a doctrine in instances when courtroom actors (particularly lawyers and judges) are required to step outside their formal legal training. Over the last century, the criminal justice system’s reliance on science and technology has increased considerably, and while some forensic science disciplines have high reliability, others are not supported by rigorous research.

Considering that judges make admissibility decisions, and lawyers present and challenge evidence in the courtroom before the fact finder, it would be reasonable to assume that these actors will have had some education and training on scientific areas. This, however, is not necessarily the case. Across both the United States and the United Kingdom, there is no requirement for formal legal training to engage in cross-disciplinary work to appreciate discipline differences and scientific endeavour. In addition, most lawyers (and by extension, judges) have very little science education prior to studying law.

In previous studies, the author has established that – particularly in the United States where the Daubert admissibility test places trial judges as evidential gatekeepers – considerable deference is paid to both the trial judge’s decision-making, and the importance of lawyers through cross-examination. How then, knowing that lawyers and judges have limited scientific understanding, can modern legal systems assure adherence to the spirit of Blackstone’s Ratio?

This paper therefore carries out a “learning analysis” of legal training, looking to justify the inclusion of the appreciation for other disciplines. It argues that lawyers should not become scientific experts, merely that they develop an overview appreciation of disciplines, through formal legal education. Such appreciative elements may, for example, a language review – the meaning of “certainty” to a legal brain is different to somebody with scientific training.

The author is seeking an international perspective on these issues, to determine how worldwide practices can be incorporated into legal education across these jurisdictions. The ultimate aim of this project is to offer lawyers a toolkit with which they can decipher unfamiliar evidence and therefore increase the effectiveness of their role within the criminal justice system, upholding Blackstone’s centuries-old principle.

ABSTRACT. Every society needs good law to thrive and, even more so – excellent judges. This paper concerns judicial virtues of character and intellect as one of the promising links between Western and Eastern ethical and legal traditions. Unlike in the East, the role of virtues had long been neglected in modern Western normative theory but was revived in ethics, and now its weight grows also in legal theory. The author will argue that the idea of judicial excellence is best understood in terms of virtues, seen as acquired and reliable dispositions to act in a morally righteous way. Judicial virtues are the virtues that judges possess in connection with their role in the lives of others to whom the court serves justice. The results of research concerning the Polish and European judiciary represented by eight essential virtues will be presented as the foundation for the proposed aretaic (virtue-based) account of the judiciary. By analogy, it may be considered to signify a “way of the judge” since virtues often surface in times of hardship and constitute their possessor and the institution they represent. The aretaic account of the judiciary has several practical consequences, one of them being the problem of selecting candidates for judicial offices. On the face of it, societies agree that judges should be appointed based on merit. In addition to formal education and legal knowledge, the law demands the ‘impeccability of character’ from candidates. However, the meaning of this criterion is not self-evident, and the selection procedures often fall short of giving it its full due. Especially in times of partisan politics, personal qualities become misunderstood for the ability to contribute to the partisan cause. After considering how the idea of judicial virtues most adequately explains what democratic societies demand from a judge, the paper will discuss how we may identify and select the candidates for judicial offices who possess the relevant traits. To answer this practical problem, the author points to the development of virtue and the moral education of lawyers. In addition to procedures of screening for virtues and vices, moral education and virtue development shed light on how to improve the judicial selection process.

ABSTRACT. The question of anomie is often neglected by scholars concerned with the point at which legal philosophy meets social philosophy and political thought. The main reason for this neglect is that, as Jeffrey C. Alexander has argued, full anomie, understood as the total disappearance of norms, is something that cannot happen in the real world: the human drive towards normativity makes the total absence of rules impossible. However, it is precisely this paradox that makes normativity the main problem in the anomic moment to be considered - because the possibility of its occurrence reveals the extent to which normative elements contribute to the emergence of anomic circumstances. In the proposed presentation, the author will juxtapose and combine two possible models of this problem: an ancient and a modern one, and combine them. From the ancient one (mainly the concept of stasis from Thucydides' 'Peloponnesian War') he will draw the concept of the sphere of normativity as a space in which different narratives about how it should be constructed clash, leading to social chaos. From the modern one, he will draw on three concepts of anomie, developed by Émile Durkheim, Robert Merton and Jürgen Habermas. He will interpret anomie as the problem of the incommensurability of desirable means and ends in societies, resulting from Habermas' decoupling of system and lifeworld. In contrast to Habermas and his project of modernity, however, he will present the sphere of normativity, to which the ideas of Durkheim, Merton and - also - Habermas apply, as inseparable from the other spheres of human activity, using the Greek term nomos to understand it. Through this juxtaposition, as a case study, he will interpret Thucydides' text as an example of the inflation of normativity as a contributing factor to anomie. The main aim of this paper is therefore to present normativity (mainly: the inflation of normativity) as a factor in the aggravation of anomic circumstances and to bring the ancient and modern concept of this institution closer to the actual normative world by juxtaposing the philosophical background (nomos, modernity) from which it derives.

ABSTRACT. Fully acknowledging that intergovernmental organizations possess their own internal legal orders that they govern with autonomy, which leads to the more or less conscious development of a legal doctrine by these organizations. This paper seeks to examine how crises happening in international organizations, and their resolution, lead to changes in their legal doctrine. The study focuses on a sample of international organizations from the United Nations family, and regional ones in Europe (the European Union and the Council of Europe) and in Asia (organizations like the ASEAN, the APEC, the SAARC, or the East Asia Summit). It investigates internal crises these organizations’ legal orders have experienced or are experiencing to analyse how these occurrences modified these organizations’ approaches to their own norms and institutions, with a particular emphasis on the constitutional level. Different sorts of crises are found to affect an international organization’s legal doctrine with regard to its constitutional instruments. This effect is observed in the attitude displayed by the organization with regard to its norms and institutions, reflected through interpretation, the abrogation of old norms or institutions, or the creation of new ones. The legal discourse of an international organization, which may be expressed by different channels like its decision-making bodies, its officials, or its judicial bodies, is also found to reflect these changes. Changes in the legal doctrine of an international organizations, in particular when happening at the constitutional level, affects directly the distribution of power within the organization, and thus the capacity of member states to promote their interests therein. It has also some impact on the relations between an international organization and its member states, in particular the extent of their obligations. The study contributes to deepening the understanding of proper law of international organizations by replacing their salient legal features in the perspective of the political context from which they arise. By analysing the accidents, both factual and legal, that lead to their modification, legal doctrines proper to each organization studied and their main principles are identified and explained.

ABSTRACT. Following Gustav Radbruch’s idea presented in short chapter – titled “Ästhetik des Rechts” – of his famous book “Rechtsphilosophie” (1932) we would like to introduce the general concept of the aesthetics of law as a fifth branch of the philosophy of law.

The paper will be devoted to the presentation of results in searching for the fifth branch of the philosophy of law, which – apart from the ontology of law, epistemology of law, logic and legal ethics – completes its research areas analogically to general philosophy.

It turns out that the aesthetic aspects of law may have practical significance in all of its five phenomena, that is: creating, binding, observing, applying and interpreting.

Moreover, the aesthetics of law also influences the shaping of legal awareness and attitudes towards the law.

The whole argument was organized in such a way that (1) external and (2) internal approaches to the aesthetics of law were distinguished and (3) the issue of law as a tool of aestheticization will be presented.

All this will be supported by some examples taken from the world of culture and art – where we would be able to present allegorical manifestations of Justice, Law, and Politics – both in Eastern and Western arts.

ABSTRACT. Nowadays, with societies becoming more and more culturally diverse, we easily find an increasing number of efforts to accommodate cultural differences in law. The doctrine of cultural defense, although controversial, is just an example. However, these efforts are criticized for a variety of reasons. One of the criticisms goes roughly as follows: even if law aspires to accommodate cultural differences, it cannot accommodate all the cultures that exist, so it has to choose those cultures it accommodates and those it does not; this means that law which purports to accommodate cultural differences would be ironically unfair. Another criticism goes as follows: if a judge, for example, tries to decide a case involving cultural differences she/he has to make decisions anyway as to which culture to prioritize; this means that law which purports to accommodate cultural differences would consist of ad hoc decisions without any fair principles to support them. This paper analyses these two criticisms and claims that even if what they say are true the same criticism can also be directed against any laws including the current global legal system which is made up of laws of/among nation-states with their own jurisdictions. We cannot say that accommodating cultural differences in law is wrong for the above reasons alone.

ABSTRACT. Until the Meiji Restoration, human rights, the 'right to be respected as an individual', were not fully guaranteed by law in Japan. Japanese law was different from European law, since Japanese law was based the Ritsuryo system, which was derived from traditional Chinese law, and the Japan’s indigenous law of the Samurai. After the Meiji Restoration, a constitution was created in succession to European law, but its content still restricted the guarantee of the right to be 'respected as an individual'. The right to be 'respected as an individual' was only guaranteed in Japanese law through drastic systemic reform by the US after the defeat in the Second World War (Pacific War). Today, unless the Constitution is amended, no such infringement of individual rights by law occurs in Japan. However, there are some customs and practices that violate the Japanese Constitution's guarantee of gender equality (guaranteeing the right not to be discriminated against on the basis of gender), such as, for example, women not being allowed in the sumo ring (Dohyo). China, on the other hand, is still like Japan before World War II, where individual rights are violated by law. Law is pluralistic. There are many societies in Asia and Africa where the rules governing people's behavior are not limited to state law, but exist in a pluralistic ways as religious law and customary law. Even in African societies, where cultural identities are respected in constitutions and fundamental laws, and gender equality (guaranteeing the right not to be discriminated against on the basis of gender) is stipulated in law, there is a reality that laws and justice are practiced in ways that are contrary to gender equality. In this presentation, I would like to clarify the discourse on how cultural identities that violate human rights under international law are justified, focusing on Asian and African law, which is different from international law that is considered to be influenced by Europe.

ABSTRACT. Historically, the fact of cultural diversity has often been cited to cast dought on the universality of international human rights norms. Then, how should human rights theories respond to this criticism? This presentation highlights three justificatory strategies to respond to criticism. The first is to respond to it by emphasising the function of international law. Proponents of this strategy claim that the functions and purposes of the international human rights regime benefit all proponents of cultures, also claiming that it implies that international human rights norms are not afflicted by cultural diversity. The second strategy is to use the interpretation of cultural resources to vindicate the plausibility of international human rights norms. For this, each culture is assumed to be able to change itself in a way that supports human rights norms. The third is to ground international human rights norms in the interests that should be universally shared. Some theorists utilise the moral weight of human needs to show these interests, while others depend on the universal value of agency or autonomy. This presentation shows the supremacy of the third strategy, as the one that can offer a more solid ground for universal support than the first and guide the interpretation of cultural resources. It especially shows the moral importance of equality and agency as the grounding values for international human rights norms to accommodate and respect cultural differences.

ABSTRACT. Despite its claims for neutrality, the law is not hermetic to the socio-economic and cultural sub-systems in which it operates. Cultural representations and systems of values deeply affect both legal and meta-legal concepts that feed the autopoiesis of the law. It can thus be postulated that the soft and culturally influenced conception of jus — as a guiding principle of modern liberal legal systems — translate into observable differences of the lex in its concrete implementation. This paper therefore aims to critically discuss at first the differences of the concept of Justice in both the Japanese and European historical and cultural contexts, showing that differences in concrete legal outcomes (sein) are often rooted in culturally biased (and differing) views on relevant applicable rules and principles (sollen). The Japanese word for “justice” (seigi – 正義)), is not used as a legal term in the same dimension as in the West. It is used in a rather abstract, idealistic sense, such as in statements about “achieving justice” (seigi no jitsugen – 正義の実現), but it does not appear frequently in legal dictionaries.

Although globalisation and international trade pushes towards an increased use of legal transplants and cross-fertilization, deeply engrained cultural differences remain crucial and may be expressed in legislation. As the second part of the paper will show with the help of experimental data, differing western and eastern cultural views on how to solve a legal dispute may result in very different systematic outcomes. What would constitute a just and acceptable solution is indeed not always identical in the West and in the East. A ruthless legal unification is therefore not always the optimal solution. Instead, it may be argued that the detrimental consequences of legal fragmentation could be mitigated and – to a certain extent – overcome by a tighter and thoughtful coordination (as opposed to pure and simple uniformization) of legal systems for the benefit of all, and for the further development of transnational relations.

ABSTRACT. Political instrumentalism claims that political procedures should be justified primarily in terms of their tendency to lead to good political consequences. How should this view be assessed? Although this view is contrasted with non-instrumental justifications of political procedures (especially democracy), a critical and comparative assessment of instrumentalist and non-instrumentalist justifications is currently lacking in the literature. Filling this gap is necessary to productively address the question of how alternative political procedures—including not just democracy but also the recently proposed epistocratic and lottocratic proposals—should be comparatively justified.

This paper aims to fill this gap by making two contributions. First, it argues that the extant objections to instrumentalism are inadequate. Specifically, this paper discusses two objections. A Dictatorial Implication Objection says instrumentalism objectionably permits dictatorial or oligarchic political procedures. A Non-Exclusiveness Objection says instrumentalism fails to offer a principled ground to reject all non-instrumental considerations. The former objection is inadequate because it is unduly question-begging against instrumentalism. The latter objection is inadequate because, even if it applies to pure instrumentalism, it fails to apply to hybrid forms of instrumentalism—the views that, even if some non-instrumental procedural values such as political equality may be taken into consideration, any such value is categorically outweighed by instrumental considerations.

Thus, we currently lack a rationale to reject at least some, if not all, versions of hybrid instrumentalism. My second aim is to explore such rationale by outlining Substantive Objections to instrumentalism. A Substantive Objection to instrumentalism says that the moral value underlying the importance of an instrumental procedural value does not always outweigh a moral value underlying the importance of a non-instrumental procedural value. For example, if the reason we find the tendency to produce correct political outcomes important is that it will serve people’s interest in economic prosperity, and the reason we find political equality—or equal opportunity for political influence—important is that it is constitutive of an egalitarian social relationship, then, as far as these underlying moral values are concerned, the tendency to produce correct political outcomes does not seem to categorically outweigh political equality. I argue that such a Substantive Objection can take various forms and cast into doubt many substantive conceptions of instrumentalism, whether pure or hybrid. Although Substantive Objections may not defeat all versions of instrumentalism, they can avoid the problems with the extant objections and enrich the standards with which we comparatively justify political procedures.

ABSTRACT. Do groups have well-being? Despite its importance to moral philosophy, political philosophy, and social science, this question has received surprisingly little attention in the literature.

The idea of group well-being has an important implication for political philosophy. When combined with the view that states are group agents, it naturally follows that those states have prudential reasons to promote their own group well-being. Thus, this theory would account for the state-relative character of political decision-making; the prudential reason that group well-being provides will explain why states are usually justified in favoring their own citizens over cosmopolitan concerns. Furthermore, states must treat their present and future citizens equally, as prudence requires temporally neutral treatment of one’s future self. It will thus provide a novel perspective on prioritizing well-being of future-generations.

It seems that our everyday talk often presupposes and sometimes explicitly mentions the well-being of groups or at least some related notions. I argue that we should take these observations at face value and accept that certain groups have well-being. After setting out the idea of group well-being, I raise three possible objections to this view and address them: (1) an objection from metaphysical parsimony, (2) an objection from the consciousness requirement, and (3) an objection from normative double counting.

According to the second objection, for some entity to be a well-being subject, i.e., a subject with well-being, it must have the capacity for consciousness. This requirement poses a serious problem for any theory of group well-being, for it is reasonable to think that no groups have the capacity for phenomenal consciousness. I argue that we should reject the requirement and it should be weakened by appealing to a widely accepte metaphysical account called four-dimensionalism.

The third objection is that, if, as I argue, groups have well-being, then it seems that we would have a moral reason to promote those groups' well-being. Then, we would have extra moral reasons to do what benefits certain people merely because they belong to groups. This seems to be an objectionable kind of double counting since the individual members are already counted as moral patients. My reply to the objection builds on a distinction between having well-being and having moral standing. I contend that group well-being does not produce any moral reason to promote it since even though group entities can have well-being in their own right, they have no moral standing.

ABSTRACT. Many liberals are in favor of the principle of neutrality: the state should remain neutral to various conceptions of the good. They also believe that liberal neutrality is incompatible with perfectionism: the state is allowed to promote certain ways of life to make people’s lives better. Some philosophers, such as Joseph Raz and Steven Wall, challenge this entrenched view and argue a certain type of perfectionistic policy can be justifiable within liberalism. Nevertheless, their liberal perfectionism has been highly criticized.

In his Liberalism with Excellence, Matthew Kramer proposes an innovative account of liberal perfectionism. He offers a new argument why liberalism can have both neutrality and perfectionism at the same time. The aim of this presentation is to critically examine his ‘aspirational perfectionism’. After summarizing his view, I will raise some objections to it. And in the final part, I will suggest a different way of how to reconcile neutrality with perfection.

In his view, perfectionistic policies such as subsidy for art, sport and various activities can be a part of demands of justice. Nevertheless, his perfectionism is grounded by a neutral concern: promoting each person’s self-respect. Relying on John Rawls’s argument, Kramer points out that self-respect is one of the vital basic goods which the government must care about, though cannot promote directly. Then he argues that ‘excellence of society’ is a necessary condition of each citizens’ warranted self-respect. And it is the exceptional accomplishments of a few outstanding individuals that can enhance the excellence of society. Therefore, the government has a reason to promote art, sport and other human activities.

However, his argument suffers from several problems. Firstly, he did not fully explain what kind of human activities count as excellent accomplishments that contribute to excellence of the society as a whole. Secondly, it is not clear that great achievements by fellow citizens are necessary. Even if you admit Kramer’s claim about the relationship between individual self-respect can be promoted by outstanding achievements by foreigners. Thirdly, and more importantly, I will argue that his account of self-respect is not neutral to different conceptions of good life, but in fact presupposes highly controversial view about individual virtues.

Then, I will suggest that liberal neutrality should be considered as not one but several moral requirements. And based on this ‘disaggregated’ conception of neutrality, I will argue that it is possible to defend moderate perfectionism.

ABSTRACT. This presentation aims to focus on the distinction Jeremy Bentham establishes between direct and indirect legislation. More precisely, it evaluates the consistency of their definitions and the modalities of distinguishing them by introducing the issue of temporality. To achieve this purpose, it relates on Bentham’s Principles of Penal Law but also on the unpublished manuscripts entitled Indirect Legislation. At first sight, Bentham seems to strictly distinguish direct from indirect legislation. He indeed insists on the fact that direct legislation (legal sanction using punishment) happens too late and after the damages caused by the offence whereas indirect legislation should prevent them by acting before the committing of the offence. Things seem then straightforward: direct legislation occurs after the offence whereas indirect legislation occurs before the offence to prevent them. This paper aims to show that such a distinction is not accurate. Firstly, it calls into question the strict distinction between direct and indirect legislation by showing that a same law could be either direct or indirect depending on circumstances and aim of the legislator. Secondly, it shows that it is necessary for indirect legislation to work properly that offences have already been committed. Thirdly, it considers the underlying foundations of both direct and indirect legislation: an accurate account of human psychology, which is the only way to ensure legislation will regulate behaviours.

ABSTRACT. Bentham had a very interesting idea of‘indirect legislation’. In his article of ‘indirect legislation’, Bentham writes that‘[i]n direct legislation, the evil is attacked in front: in indirect legislation, it is attacked by oblique methods.’For instance, Bentham argued that, to restrict habit of drinking gin, which had bad effects on British society in the 18th century, the target should be the sellers of gin rather than the drinkers themselves. Instead of inflicting penal sanctions to the purchasers or consumers of gin, Bentham thought that taxation on distillers would be more effective, as the heavy duties on distillers would be, via pubs, passed on to consumers, who would then have no option but to reduce their consumption of gin. This paper will discuss Bentham’s work of‘Preventive Police’, which was published on line in 2018 as a new volume for The collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. And Bentham’s plan of preventive police comprises two major indirect legislation. On the one hand, Bentham proposed that various occupations such as second hand stores should receive license and should be made to keep receipts and records for inspection. This is intended to make it harder to dispose of stolen goods, which would in turn make offences of stealing less profitable. On the other hand, Bentham proposed to publish‘The Police Gazette’weekly, which would contain the news of crimes. Bentham thought that this would make it difficult for criminals to commit crimes in the same location or in the same manner by warning potential victims. Many modern criminologists in Britain and in the United States pay huge attentions to Bentham’s scheme of preventive police and they argue that Bentham’s scheme is forerunner of contemporary criminology. For instance, in a volume of Jeremy Bentham on Police: The Unknown Story and What it means for Criminology (2021), Gloria Laycock of UCL (Professor of Crime Science) argues that the modern approach of ‘situational crime prevention’can be directly compared to Bentham’s idea of indirect legislation and preventive police in that it depends on the fact that behaviors of potential criminals are determined by the situation within which they find themselves. Referring to the analysis of these modern criminologists, this paper will also explore the implications of Bentham’s scheme of preventive police for the modern world, particularly for the modern Japanese society.

ABSTRACT. The emerging field of evidence-based law (EBL) holds that law ought to be based on good evidence rather than merely on existing customs, ideals or morals. According to EBL, evidence needs to be used to demonstrate that a given law modifies behaviour to achieve some desired end, such as reduced crime, increased safety or improvements in social justice or well-being.

EBL requires an account of the kinds of evidence that are required to justify a law, and of how such evidence should be integrated to evaluate a law. This paper seeks to provide such an account.

Evidential Pluralism is a new philosophical theory of causal enquiry. It holds that establishing a causal claim requires: i. Establishing that the putative cause and effect are correlated, and ii. Establishing that there is a mechanism that links the putative effect to the putative cause and that can account for the extent of the correlation. This thesis was originally put forward by Russo & Williamson (2007) and it has been further developed over the intervening years. Evidential Pluralism has been fruitfully applied to the biomedical and social sciences (Parkkinen et al., 2018; Shan & Williamson, 2023).

This paper argues that Evidential Pluralism can be fruitfully applied to EBL to yield a new approach to evidence-based law, EBL+, that systematically scrutinizes mechanistic evidence alongside evidence of correlation.

The paper begins by providing an introduction to EBL, outlining its key motivation and challenges. One key challenge concerns the use of Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) to test legal interventions: RCTs turn out to be less informative in the law than in other areas of enquiry such as medicine. For these reason, there is a need for EBL to consider a wider range of evidence than is common in present-day evidence-based medicine, for example. It is not clear, however, as to which evidence to take into account and how to integrate diverse evidence.

After providing an introduction to Evidential Pluralism and its application to the law, the paper goes on to argue that Evidential Pluralism promises to meet the key challenge to EBL: it can provide an account of what evidence is required to establish the effectiveness of a legal intervention and can provide an account of how to integrate diverse evidence. The paper develops a new set of methods for EBL, called EBL+. Case studies are then used to illustrate the usefulness of the EBL+ approach.

ABSTRACT. Paul J. Crutzen, the Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 1995, assigned the term ‘Anthropocene’ to the period starting in the late eighteenth century, highlighted with James Watt’s design of the steam engine in 1784, in which anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide has escalated and caused unnatural global warming. He foretold in 2002, “Unless there is a global catastrophe – a meteorite impact, a world war or a pandemic - mankind will remain a major environmental force for many millennia.” In the 2020s, we have been experiencing a likely world war and global pandemic, and it is not only timely but also a pressing need to wonder if we are facing the beginning of the end of the Anthropocene age. In this presentation, I argue that anthropocentrism should be taken over by an alternative conception that inevitably alters the paradigm of human rights philosophy, viewing humans as superior to other species and the guardians of the earth. In my account, the new paradigm resonates with ancient Eastern philosophies such as Shintoism, Buddhism, and Taoism, as well as an alternative school of Western Christianity like Giordano Bruno. First, I trace Charles Taylor’s portrait of modern intellectual history in the West as a unique transition in which human reason and nature have replaced God as the supreme source and origin of Natural Law. I then introduce Luciano Floridi’s argument that anthropocentrism gradually concedes to the humble views of humans. Second, referring to Charles Taylor, David James Stuart and Christopher Watkin, I reexamine the underlying paradigm of modern anthropocentrism or exclusive humanism in the West and identified, as the source of exclusive humanism, the fusion of ‘Pauline opposition of spirit and flesh’ with ‘Platonic-derived opposition between the immaterial and the bodily’, which was ‘one of the most influential and important synthesis which helped to form Western civilization’. Third, drawing on Steven Shaviro, Markus Gabriel, David J. Chalmers and Galen Strawson in contrast with Jacques Maritain, I present an alternative paradigm against modern anthropocentrism developed in the West. I conclude that we need to revisit our cognitive paradigm, developed in the West and embedded in our mindset around the globe, to overcome modern, secular and anthropocentric concept of ‘human rights.’

ABSTRACT. T.M. Scanlon is best known for his contractualist moral theory, which claims that an act is wrong if and only if it could only be licensed by principles other could reasonably reject. In the field of legal philosophy, however, arguably his most significant contribution is his “instrumentalist” theory rights, which holds that rights are normative constraints on the kind of actions that people are permitted to take, where these are justified by the consequences that permitting a certain course of action will foreseeably impose on individuals.

In his early essays, beginning with his seminal “Rights, Goals, and Fairness”, Scanlon applied his instrumentalist theory of rights to elucidate the nature of a variety of legal rights, such as the right to freedom of expression and the right to due process. Yet, puzzlingly, Scanlon has ceased to refer to his previous theory of rights in his more recent work. Indeed, there is a conspicuous lack of discussion of rights, whether legal or moral, in “Contractualism and Utilitarianism” and What We Owe to Each Other, which contains the definitive statement of his contractualist moral theory. This raises the following questions: Did Scanlon abandon the instrumentalist theory of rights altogether? What is the relationship, if any, between the instrumentalist theory of rights and the contractualist theory of moral wrongness?

The aim of this article is to reconsider the instrumentalist theory of rights in the light of Scanlon’s moral contractualism. I argue that, rather than replacing the instrumental theory of rights, moral contractualism can be viewed as continuous with the latter, and indeed as complementing it in an important respect. Specifically, moral contractualism can be interpreted as responding to a fundamental problem faced by the instrumentalist theory of rights: the problem of how to determine what kind of consequences are relevant and how to morally weigh them against each other, given the reasonable pluralism of beliefs among different individuals and cultures regarding what is of value and how to order them. The contractualist test of mutual justifiability offers a method for responding to this problem, by helping us to identify what kind of reasons can serve as a reasonable basis for deliberation about rights among diverse individuals. This analysis is significant as it allows us to see how the framework of moral contractualism can be applied to clarify the normative grounds of certain fundamental moral and legal rights, given the assumption of deep value pluralism.

ABSTRACT. The standard economic theory of law models the law as the instrument to achieve policy goals. On the normative side, the transaction failures which require the law’s intervention usually are not failures at all. On the positive side, the intervening law are not institutionally differentiated to be identified which area of law it is. In sum, it is not a theory of law. Based on Coase theorem: “The delimitation of rights is an essential preclude to market transactions”, I will propose a positive economic theory of right/law. “The delimitation of rights is an essential preclude to market transactions” implies that the people give up fighting and move on for transacting. We then ask why people would go to courts to settle their conflicts of interest. Firstly, the courts obviously should be independent of violence, money or politics. Secondly, the courts should decide cases based on law which are contractual arrangements of the people. Thirdly, the people should have equal access to the courts and the courts should not discriminate the people. Fourthly, the courts should efficiently decide cases which a systemization of law would help. Fifthly, the law should punish those who intentionally violate the law because they break their promises.

ABSTRACT. With artificial intelligence's rapid development, the rule of law is under siege. Complex and nontransparent algorithms create the problem of explanation to automatic decision-making; meta-experts in commercial companies design AI systems in a space where the conventional mechanism of accountability is unable to reach; excessive collections of personal data and metadata fuel generative AI such as ChatGPT but also put individuals' privacy in danger and make the environment of societal interactions manipulable.

The rule of law, the core value of modern legal systems, must respond to these challenges. One common approach is to view AI as a technology; therefore, the rule of law is a normative constraint to the applicability of AI in law. However, this approach ignores the dynamic nature of the rule of law, which actively advances social cooperation and enriches the bond of reciprocity between legal authority and legal subjects. By explicating Fuller's theory, the complex relationship between law and artificial intelligence becomes more crystal. Artificial intelligence cannot be viewed as a mere means that its moral evaluation depends on the goal it achieves. A question must be asked from the beginning: How might adopting AI into the law constitute and change the meaningful interaction between legal authority and legal subjects?

This article is divided into three parts to answer the refined question: First, it briefly explicates the idea of rational autonomy in Fuller's account and how it sheds new light on the predictability requirement in the rule of law. Second, I use the idea of a causal diagram to analyze Fuller's eight elements of the internal morality of law. Projecting the eight elements onto a causal diagram helps us realize the dynamic relationship among them and build a more robust connection between the internal morality of law and legal subjects' rational autonomy. Third, based on the first two parts, I will provide a set of prescriptive requirements to evaluate the current development of AI in the legal field. Through the dynamic interaction among eight elements in the internal morality of law, we can pinpoint how AI's adoption in law might change the bond of reciprocity and have a clearer understanding of the complex relationship between the rule of law and new technologies. Although Fuller developed his account nearly 60 years ago, situated in a specific jurisprudential context, the potentiality of his theory still waits to be discovered in the age of AI’s intervention in societal lives.

ABSTRACT. Lon Fuller, in his polemic against Legal Positivism, defended the existence of an inner morality of law, namely, a set of moral requirements that any legal system ought to respect on pain of not being efficacious at all. These requirements, related only to the form of legal rules and not to their content, were, briefly, that laws ought to be publicly known, prospective, stated in general terms, clear, stable, not inconsistent between themselves, they ought not to require the impossible, and they ought to be consistently applied by adjudicatory institutions. He called the ensemble of these requirements, "the Rule of Law". Fuller did not claim to be original in defending the desirability of each of these requirements: in a comment made in the second edition to "The Morality of Law", he mentions a paper that claims that all of these requirements were defended already by Aquinas. In my presentation, I want to highlight that some, if not all, of these requirements, were clearly defended by Francisco de Vitoria, who sometimes follows Aquinas. The requirements defended by Vitoria were that laws ought to be public, general, stable and prospective. I will show in which way his doctrine is similar, and in which way it differs from that of Fuller, and I will try to answer the question of whether we are justified in claiming that we find in Vitoria a defense of the Rule of Law in the modern sense. I will show how, in Vitoria's account, these requirements are defended not as conditions of efficacy any legal system ought to have, as in Fuller, but as conditions of attaining the common good. In Vitoria's account, therefore, requirements of the Rule of Law depend on a prior determination of the substance of law.

ABSTRACT. Most modern states are oriented toward democracy and the rule of law. Democracy and the rule of law have a close relationship, and the role of the constitution and social institutions in the development of democracy is interrelated. In the interaction between democracy and the rule of law, protecting civil liberties and rights will play a constitutional principle in liberal democracy. Modern democracy is realized through a representative system that delegates the majority’s will to politicians and political parties. The people's intention based on the representative system creates the constitution, and the foundation for the rule of law is laid through enacting laws based on the constitution. In other words, it can be said that the foundation of the rule of law is established through the political process of democracy. In “Politics as a Profession,” Weber writes, “Politics means a strong slow drilling of hard boards with passion and a sense of proportion at the same time... Only those who are certain that they will not break when the world, from their point of view, is too stupid or too mean for what they want to offer, that they can say, "Still!" Only he has the ‘profession’ of politics.” However, Weber also mentions in this article that a lawyer with a rational mind has the right qualifications as a politician. However, there is still a risk that democracy can cause from the basic principle of majority rule. Overcoming this risk wisely will be one of the operating principles for realizing the ideal rule of law. It will be an important task for humanity to torture about ways to overcome problems while realizing the ideals of democracy and the rule of law.

ABSTRACT. In ancient Rome, the Bonus Paterfamilias was the independent man, no longer subject to the authority of another Pater, and who was able to properly manage his life, family, and estate. Today, one might see it as an anachronistic remnant of a patriarchal society, but it remains present or invoked in legal systems throughout the world, especially in the realm of civil liability, where it expresses the standard of the person of average diligence for purposes of determination of fault (or the reasonable person standard in the law of torts). In the information age, humanity’s ability to acquire knowledge increased by leaps and bounds, bringing about great potential for cognitive evolution, and enabling the emergence of a more diligent average person. Arguably, this evolution is not only in the realm of possibility, but is also becoming increasingly necessary, considering the risks that human action brings to the environment, public health, security and even the human mind, and the need to demand more of humans in order to prevent or mitigate those risks. Thus, the question of whether this standard of diligence ought to be made more stringent arises. However, applying this higher standard in the context of civil (and possibly criminal) liability is a change that must be carefully considered. Is a more stringent standard justifiable? Is it fair, considering the digital divide and the different levels of technological literacy across generations and spaces? Does it instrumentalize humans to the benefit of the common good? To tackle these and other issues, this paper takes the perspective of virtue ethics, an approach that spans eras and geographies, with prominent iterations in both East and West. In particular, the paper analyses the possible influence of technology on the person of virtue, seeks to devise the characteristics of the Bonus Paterfamilias of the information age, and the path that the law ought to take to reflect this new standard.

ABSTRACT. The traditional concept of autonomy, which assumes an individual who is not influenced by others or society, and who governs and decides for themselves, is inconsistent with the fact that we are actually influenced by society, history, and individual interpersonal relationships. In particular, feminists criticize this traditional understanding of autonomy for excluding individuals who are vulnerable to the influence of social relationships, such as women, children, individuals with cognitive disabilities, and those who experience discrimination, from the scope of respect for autonomous agents due to their vulnerability to the effects of these relationships. As an alternative to traditional autonomy, the concept of "relational autonomy" has been proposed, which understands autonomy as being exercised while being influenced by social relationships and interpersonal interactions. In discussions of relational autonomy, it is common to view autonomy as consisting of a degree, which is represented by a scalar value, and a threshold. This presentation argues, however, that according to the foundational motivations and insights of relational autonomy, autonomy should be conceptualized as a degree without a threshold. Given the motivation of relational autonomy, which is to critique the exclusion of extremely vulnerable agents from autonomy, setting a threshold is not desirable because it inevitably excludes vulnerable agents whose degree of autonomy falls below the threshold. Furthermore, based on the insight that one's autonomy does not exist prior to one's relationships with others, but is acquired through the support and respect from others, we need a theory of autonomy that treats non-autonomous agents appropriately in order to enhance their autonomy and respect them. In other words, respect for autonomy should not depend on whether an individual is autonomous or not. Rather, what matters is whether an individual is meaningfully considered an agent in terms of his or her degree of autonomy. A theory of autonomy should aim to improve the autonomy of all agents who have the potential to be autonomous, without asking whether they have passed a threshold of autonomy or not.

ABSTRACT. Legal causation is a critical element in attributing legal responsibility to an actor in legal interpretation and has been extensively studied in various legal fields. In Japanese civil law, the standard theory of legal causation recognizes the existence of legal causation when there is a socially reasonable connection between an act and a result based on the assumption of factual causation determined by counterfactuals. However, in discussions involving cases such as pollution and medical malpractice, where the link between the presumed event as the cause and the infringement of rights and interests as the result is often unclear, the determination of factual causation based on counterfactuals has been criticized for its ambiguity. Moreover, causation theories in the natural sciences now understand causation probabilistically rather than relying solely on the logical rules of counterfactuals. These highlight the difference between the legal causation approach and the natural science approach to factual causation. Therefore, if a legal causation theory can be developed that provides a unified perspective with natural sciences, even in cases where the mechanism of causation is uncertain, it could be considered more effective. Given the above concerns, this presentation proposes a framework for determining factual causation, unified legal and natural science causation, within civil law torts. For this purpose, the presentation will focus on the philosophical theory of causation, especially Interventionist Accounts, as it shares similarities with the framework for determining factual causation in the law. Interventionist Accounts introduces the concept of "intervention" to manipulate the causal system from the outside and seeks to reveal the structure of causation by constructing causal models. Interventionist Accounts emphasize what would have happened if one event had differed from another, which aligns with the analysis of causation based on counterfactuals. At the same time, probabilistic dependencies among variables are considered to express causations in Interventionist Accounts. Therefore, Interventionist Accounts can bridge the gap between the legal causation approach to factual causation and the natural science approach to factual causation. The presentation will be structured as follows: 1. The existing influential arguments on the framework for determining the existence or non-existence of factual causation in law will be summarized. 2. After reviewing Interventionist Accounts theory of causation, the concept of a legal causation theory applying Interventionist Accounts will be presented. 3. The practical implications of a legal causation theory applying Interventionist Accounts will be discussed.