ABSTRACT. Recognitional legitimacy examines whether a given political entity should be recognised by international society as a member (i.e. sovereign state) in good standing of the system of states. This presentation argues that its morality should be based on justice and self-determination, where the latter should empower subjects to transform their state into a free group agent.

First, I propose that the primary function of recognitional legitimacy is to address the ‘international boundary problem’: who should be entitled to hold sovereignty rights in order to engage with the development of international orders. Second, I scrutinise and reject the accounts proposed by Buchanan and Naticchia respectively. Naticchia’s act-consequentialist account fails to appreciate the primary function of recognitional legitimacy whereas Buchanan’s minimal justice theory can permit benign annexation. Third, I argue that recognitional legitimacy should tend to the idea of territorial sovereignty, whose moral justification is rooted both on justice and (collective) self-determination. While Buchanan’s theory replies to the demand of justice, I propose an account of self-determination for the issue. I call it self-determination as empowerment (SDE). It asserts that ‘individuals subject to a state should be empowered to form a free group agent, establishing common civic lives that provide communal and institutional goods, while respecting ecological constraints and international norms.’ A free group agent means that the state in question can act according to its collective decision-making, without the domination of others.

Finally, I argue for the advantage of my proposal. SDE provides a fundamental, moral reason for international recognition. It situates states in an interdependent world and reveals the self- and others-regarding dimensions of territorial sovereignty. It also addresses the ideal of reciprocal legitimation, which advocates that a state’s participation in international institutions can contribute to its legitimacy; conversely, if international institutions enhance the legitimacy of states, their doing so can contribute to their own legitimacy. Additionally, SDE helps identify the injustice inflicted upon de facto states. De facto states, such as Kosovo, Taiwan and Somaliland, are states with de facto independence and yet holding little or no international recognition. The entities have their SDE violated. That is, if a state succeeded in securing internal legitimacy but fell short of the right to non-interference, the people therein would be deprived of the moral power to construct long-term, stable, and coherent social conditions for their collective life-plans.

ABSTRACT. This presentation argues that nonhuman animals should be included in workplace democracy. Specifically, we justify indirect representation of nonhuman animals’ interests by selecting representatives from among participating workers to be involved in decision-making processes. These representatives would participate in processes such as auditing and serving on boards. Nonhuman animals, such as police dogs and circus animals, obviously contribute to society through labor (Coulter, 2016). However, current society does not properly recognize this fact and does not consider them as workers deserving protection. In response, some scholars argue that nonhuman animals should have labor rights similar to those of humans (Cochrane, 2016; Shaw, 2018). An important recent trend in animal ethics is the "political turn," which focuses on institutionally guaranteeing the fundamental rights of nonhuman animals. Cochrane (2018) contributes to this discussion by proposing the establishment of a democratic political order at the state or global level through "animal representatives" who would advocate for the interests of nonhuman animals. However, such institutional reform is ambitious, and many challenges remain for its implementation at these broad societal levels. This presentation applies Cochrane's democratic practice to the "workplace" domain to explore the theoretical design and justification of institutions, as this area offers greater feasibility for implementation. The aim is to incorporate nonhuman animals into "workplace democracy." We argue that there are two reasons why democratic practices should be incorporated into workplaces where nonhuman animals work. First, it can protect nonhuman animal workers and promote good work. In workplace democracy, representatives can protect the interests of nonhuman animal workers by deliberating with other representatives and managers about what constitutes good work and what kind of work environment should be created. Second, it can prevent domination by managers and supervisors. Without the process of workplace democracy outlined in the first point, there is an increased risk that nonhuman animals will be forced to work at the whim of managers and supervisors. Exploitation and enslaved labor conditions will go unchecked, and we may end up in a situation where we cannot even obtain the recognition that nonhuman animals should be protected as workers. If our argument succeeds, it will effectively protect nonhuman animal workers while simultaneously positioning workplace democracy as an intermediate step toward a globally democratic society that includes nonhuman animals.

ABSTRACT. Unlike the individualistic self-dependent concept of autonomy in constitutional law, borrowing the feminists critiques of relational autonomy, I propose the concept of relational autonomy, which is a positive right to access, form, and sustain living relations to other human beings and more-than-human beings. This relational understanding of personal autonomy, although not well-embraced by the Japanese courts in practice, is compatible with the Constitution of Japan, especially Article 13, when the right to pursuit of happiness is interpreted as a foundational right for other substantial rights. The first part of the paper will briefly explain the concepts of relational autonomy with both human and more-than-human beings.

The second part of the paper explores the current jurisprudence in Japan through the perspective of relational autonomy. In particular, by analyzing the judicial reasoning of the public, whether public interests, public safety, public wellbeing or public property, I try to explore the paradoxes in the idea of the public, and how the idea of public is utilized as a tool to silence and erase otherwise viable claims of relational autonomy in the case of married females and Ainu people in Japan. By expounding the courts narratives in response to the plaintiffs’ Article 13 claim of autonomy in the one-surname case in 2015 and the Ainu fishing right case in 2025, I attempt to show how particular kinds of relations and relational autonomy are being exterminated from the judicial decisions by, for and under the name of the public.

Last but not least, this paper argues that the paradox of the existing judicial review, and the complete erasure of relational autonomy derive from a lack of willingness to open up and a deficiency of imagination. Therefore, this paper ends with a proposal to resolve the paradox in the dichotomy of public and private by suggesting the deliberative model approach by Seyla Benhabib as an alternative approach and demonstrate how a judicial approach using the deliberative model can enlarge the possible scope of relations, recognize and effectuate claims to relation autonomy while resist legal fossilization of relations, which constitutes the foundation of the right to life, liberty and happiness under Article 13 of the Japanese Constitution.

ABSTRACT. The debate over whether the administrative state established since Roosevelt’s New Deal violates the rule of law remains unresolved. Recently, the Supreme Court of the U.S. has initiated a series of corrections to the New Deal’s administrative law framework. For nearly a century following the New Deal, American administrative law scholars have regarded the framework—where Congress delegates specific agencies to interpret laws and fill in legal details to carry out legislative objectives—as essential to contemporary democratic governance. The flourishing development of U.S. administrative law has been built upon either supplementing or critiquing this framework. Through a series of rulings, the court made two dramatic changes in administrative law. First, the Major Questions Doctrine (MQD) proposed by the Roberts Court enables it to review and overturn congressional authorizations for administrative agencies to interpret laws. Second, the Court overturned the Chevron precedent by citing the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), thereby preventing federal courts from invoking Chevron to defer to agencies’ statutory interpretations. This allows federal courts to arbitrarily determine the standard and intensity of their review of agencies’ interpretations.

This article argues that the Roberts Court Revolution (RCR) is problematic. However, the fallacies of RCR can guide academics toward more productive research in American administrative law. First, MQD is not constitutionally implied; it is an invention of the Roberts Court. Second, the Roberts Court has developed three unrelated MQDs, which will create confusion in the federal court system's review of administrative cases. Third, the Roberts Court's reasoning for overturning the Chevron Doctrine is flawed, for the APA and the Chevron Doctrine can coexist. Fourth, the Roberts Court's reasoning for overturning Chevron provides no substantive guidance, leading to inconsistent standards across federal courts and creating uncertainty for both agencies and their counterparties. Despite these flaws and foreseeable consequences, this article contends that RCR holds constructive significance for the American administrative law. The debate between proponents and opponents of RCR highlights the most complex yet unresolved issues since the New Deal era. These include questions such as how to distinguish legal questions from factual ones, and how to delineate the boundaries between judicial interpretation of the law and the agencies’ statutory interpretation based on congressional delegation. The examination of the questions raised by RCR is sufficient to propel American administrative law into its next phase.

ABSTRACT. This paper presents preliminary results from the COIN project (The emergence of Collective Intentionality in participatory decision-making processes of the Courts), an interdisciplinary investigation conducted at the Gustav Radbruch Institute (Pavol Jozef Šafárik University). The project examines how collective intentionality may arise within collegiate judicial deliberation, framing judicial decision-making as a fundamentally relational and democratic practice, and proceeds from a simple question with immodest implications: how does a collegial court think? Not metaphorically, but ontologically: how does a deliberating panel transform dispersed convictions into a unitary juridical act endowed with authority and legitimacy, and what conceptual structures enable this transformation? Building on philosophical accounts of collective intentionality and social ontology (e.g., Tuomela, Searle) as well as debates on the procedural legitimacy of courts, the study combines conceptual analysis with empirical observation. It asks whether and how panels of judges form shared intentions, and whether such sharedness influences the determination of the legal status of facts, acts, or entities adjudicated in trial, thereby shaping both practical outcomes and the underlying normative logic of judicial reasoning. To date, approximately twenty professional judges from collegiate courts in Italy and Slovakia have been interviewed, with a third jurisdiction to follow. The interviews explored five thematic areas: (1) personal and career trajectories; (2) mutual knowledge among panel members and its influence on deliberative stance; (3) procedural and temporal structures of deliberation (in-person vs. written exchanges, sequencing); (4) modes of decision-making (voting practices, pursuit of unanimity, management of dissent); and (5) whether and how panels explicitly deliberate on the juridical status of the facts or entities at issue—whether legal status itself becomes an object of collective reflection. Preliminary findings reveal recurrent tendencies toward unanimity and conformism, often justified as safeguards of institutional legitimacy and coherence. At the same time, early evidence indicates that explicit engagement with the juridical status of contested facts is uneven: in some panels, status-constitutive reasoning is foregrounded, whereas in others, collective choices appear shaped more by interpersonal dynamics and procedural conventions than by explicit ontological deliberation. These mixed patterns raise important theoretical and normative questions about the authenticity of collective intentionality in courts and its democratic value. What emerges, in the end, is not a doctrine but a perspective: that the democratic legitimacy of adjudication lies in its relational texture, in the ceaseless translation of singular voices into collective meaning.

ABSTRACT. In recent years, there has been growing discourse surrounding the notion of Legal Singularity(LS). This concept refers to a profound qualitative shift in the law and legal institutions that is expected to occur following the advent of the so-called Technological Singularity. At this point, it is anticipated that the processes of lawmaking, adoption, promulgation, amendment, and adjudication will undergo fundamental transformation—surpassing the bounds of human comprehension. Among the various projections of this transformation, one particularly prominent focus is the project of Legal Personalization or Personalized Law. This denotes a move away from the traditional “one-size-fits-all” paradigm—where rules are uniformly applied—toward a system in which different rules apply to different individuals. This presentation introduces the ongoing debates surrounding the prospect of LS, with a particular emphasis on legal personalization, and examines the arguments on both sides. Proponents argue that personalized laws may enhance legal clarity, improve public understanding of the law, and dramatically reduce the cost of legal services. Furthermore, they claim that such individually tailored rules bring us closer to the ideal of a perfect and precise regulatory order. If so, the aspiration toward precision and completeness in legal regulation can be seen as aiming at a kind of legal utopia—an ideal legal order devoid of ambiguity, inefficiency, and injustice. By contrast, critics warn that the personalization of law risks abandoning the law’s inherent public and social values—namely, its commitment to the rule of law and justice. It may dissolve the shared social background that underpins legal legitimacy and exacerbate inequalities among individuals. More fundamentally, legal personalization could erode the moral core of law itself, reducing human beings to mere data-driven nodes in a compliance regime—ultimately ushering in a dystopia. This presentation focuses on the critique that the project of Legal Personalization and Singularity undermine the foundational principles of “the Rule of Law”—namely, universality and predictability—and thereby threaten its very ideal. In response, I will examine counterarguments and evaluate whether this critique is decisive. Finally, I suggest that despite their apparent incompatibility, both the utopian and dystopian visions suffer from internal limitations. Between them lies a potential middle ground—one that warrants exploration and may offer a more balanced path forward.

ABSTRACT. This presentation examines how the rapid development and social implementation of AI agents are reshaping fundamental legal and ethical notions of will, autonomy, and legal personhood. As AI agents increasingly act on behalf of individuals in decision-making and contract formation, a crucial question arises: should they be regarded merely as advanced tools, or as entities capable of possessing a limited form of legal agency? This study suggests that the idea of mediated autonomy may help illuminate this middle ground. The term refers to a relational mode of agency in which human intention and algorithmic function are intertwined, without collapsing into either full autonomy or mere instrumentality. It offers a way to conceptualize technologically mediated action without erasing the human normative core. The challenge, therefore, is to understand how such mediation transforms the structure of consent and the exercise of self-determination, while preserving the moral and legal coherence of will and responsibility. Against this background, the presentation develops a principled analysis of AI agents and cybernetic avatars from the standpoint of classical liberalism, yet informed by an institutionally grounded understanding of normativity—one that views autonomy not as an isolated faculty but as constituted through legal and social structures. This framework shows how the transformation of the agent–tool relationship provides a critical lens through which to reconsider modern concepts of personhood, intention, and responsibility in the age of intelligent systems.

ABSTRACT. At the center of the concept of natural rights is the idea that people are free from all bonds, political and social relations, and possess rights that exist prior to civil society and the state. According to Arendt, inalienable human rights contain a paradox from the outset: human rights are based on an abstract image of a human being that does not exist. Even in the most ancient times, there was a sense of belonging to a community or group, and one cannot speak of an abstract human living an isolated life. Rights on paper can only become reality if they are actually recognized in a political community by people who acknowledge each other as equal and entitled. Arendt's concept of the “right to have rights” acknowledges that rights do not come from birth but are dependent on membership in and recognition by a political community. Stateless individuals who lack this membership remain excluded from legal protection and social recognition. Thomas Hill Green's theory of rights also emphasizes the inseparable link between rights and social recognition. Unlike natural rights theorists, Green argues that rights are not innate but arise through mutual recognition within a society that aims to achieve the “common good.” Rights are a dual structure that combines individual interests with collective interests and builds a bridge between the individual and society. A society that voluntarily recognizes and protects rights should promote a collective awareness of mutual respect, equality, and the common good. In this dynamic, rights are recognized and protected through reciprocal moral actions that link individual and social welfare within a consistent ethical framework. This article examines and compares the theses of Hannah Arendt and T.H. Green, highlighting their shared belief in interpersonal recognition in the realization of rights and personhood. Despite their similarities, they differ in their conceptual frameworks: Green focuses on mutual recognition as necessary for the formation and moral development of a society, while Arendt criticizes the abstractness of natural rights and emphasizes that the political and social dimensions of recognition are fundamental in combating statelessness and exclusion. This article places their theories within the broader context of the debate on human rights and political belonging, demonstrating how both philosophers illuminate the indispensable role of social recognition in bridging the gap between abstract humanity and lived human experience.

ABSTRACT. Why do concepts such as existence, dignity, and rights continue to appear secure even when the conditions that once sustained them begin to withdraw?

Hannah Arendt does not treat these concepts as natural or self-evident foundations. They emerge under pressure. When political belonging collapses and legal protection loses its effectiveness, what remains is not simply the loss of rights, but a transformation in how these concepts function.

Arendt’s understanding of existence begins not with inner authenticity but with orientation in a shared world. Yet such orientation may remain conceivable even when its worldly grounding becomes unstable. Dignity, in turn, becomes most visible at the moment when life can no longer sustain it. What appears as moral intensity may also signal a displacement of political action.

The formulation of the “right to have rights” sharpens the paradox. Rights may persist in juridical language even where there are no subjects effectively able to claim them. The issue is not the disappearance of humanity as a term, but a shift in the conditions under which it organizes common life.

What survives is not humanity as substance, but its vocabulary. Arendt’s juridical thought draws attention to this uneasy persistence, and to the fragile structures through which human beings become recognizable as juridical subjects.

ABSTRACT. Neoliberalism and its governing principles have exacerbated socioeconomic disparities and fostered extreme nationalism, which seeks to exclude immigrants and refugees. Referring to recent U.S. Supreme Court cases, Wendy Brown argues that judicial decisions, which assert that even freedom of thought and speech should be governed by market principles, have undermined the foundations of democracy. In this context, law has devolved into a tool of neoliberalism. This report aims to critically reexamine human rights and democracy under neoliberal governance, particularly from the perspective of the “idea of communism.” Karl Marx once criticized human rights as a form of bourgeois individualism, rooted in the idea of freedom. Today, Giorgio Agamben critiques human rights as too powerless to confront neoliberal governance, which marginalizes and excludes migrant workers. In contrast, Étienne Balibar and Claude Lefort have sought to reconstruct the concept of human rights as a theory of equality, advocating for a form of democracy where movements for human rights recognition and the objections of the marginalized develop horizontally. Additionally, Jacques Rancière highlights the importance of human rights in constituting "bare lives" (as Agamben calls them) as political subjects. He argues that equality should be recognized unconditionally and sees dissensus — driven by those excluded — as central to reshaping democracy. Rancière advocates for moving beyond consensus politics and the politics of experts. In this context, Costas Douzinas revives the right to resistance and revolution, concepts which have largely disappeared from modern law, and describes democracy as a perpetual struggle. Similar to Judith Butler, Douzinas sees resistance, solidarity, and direct democracy — symbolized by movements like Occupy Wall Street — as practical outcomes, particularly through street assemblies and their autonomy. However, compared to discourses on equality, solidarity, or the rights to resistance and revolution, their theory of democracy lacks a clear definition. In this report, I will examine constitutionalism and the judiciary’s role as essential foundations for contemporary democratic practices, grounded in the idea of communism, by drawing on arguments from contemporary critical legal studies.

ABSTRACT. This article provides a critical examination of Jimmy Chia-Shin Hsu’s reconstruction of communicative retributivism in conjunction with Matthew Kramer’s purgative rationale to justify the legitimacy of the death penalty in a democratic regime. In his article “Does Communicative Retributivism Necessarily Negate Capital Punishment?”, Jimmy argues that capital punishment can be justified within a communicative framework, particularly when applied to radically evil offenders. I argue that this hybrid construction is normatively incoherent and theoretically self-defeating. In Jimmy’s view, the death penalty functions as a counter-message to the moral insult expressed by the offender’s crime, and communicative retributivism does not inherently preclude the death penalty. Moreover, when punishment is imposed after a sufficiently long period for reflection, even execution can coexist with the offender’s potential repentance. My argument develops along three lines of critique. First, Jimmy misunderstands the idea of communication as outlined by R.A. Duff. Second, Jimmy’s reliance on the notion of evil opens the possibility of undermining liberal commitments. Third, Jimmy’s theory conflates the communicative goal with the purgative rationale of moral cleansing. The result is that this theory speaks the language of inclusion while performing the logic of exclusion. After providing my critical analysis of Jimmy’s hybrid theory of capital punishment, I argue that from the perspective of democratic law, a democratic regime ought to embrace the principle of non-exclusion. I build this principle upon Seana Shiffrin’s substantial theory, offering negative and positive arguments for the principle of non-exclusion. This article shows that the substantial conception of democracy plays an essential role in thinking about the legitimacy of punishment. By introducing the idea of democratic law and the principle of non-exclusion, we can outline a better normative framework for assessing the legitimacy of capital punishment, one that grounds legal authority not in the purification of evil, but in the preservation of mutual accountability among citizens.

ABSTRACT. In this presentation, I examine the resolution of errors concerning duress, which is characterized as an excuse defense. Specifically, I deal with two situations: one in which a situation of duress actually exists but the actor does not perceive it, and one in which the actor mistakenly believes there is a situation of duress although none exists. To this end, I first briefly set forth the general theory of error in criminal law. For an error in criminal law to be relevant, both the objective and corresponding subjective requirements must be conditions for criminal liability (including the elements of the offense, unlawfulness, and culpability). For example, where the objective elements of the offense exist but the corresponding subjective element of the offense (i.e., intent) is absent, it becomes an error as to the elements of the offense (mistake of fact), and in principle, no offense is established. Likewise, where the subjective element of the offense exists but the corresponding objective element of the offense is not satisfied, it becomes a reversed error as to the elements of the offense, and in principle, no offense is established. Conversely, where either the objective requirement or its corresponding subjective requirement is not a condition for criminal liability, the error is irrelevant. For example, the status of being below the age of criminal responsibility is determined solely objectively, and whether the actor believed that he/she was below the age of criminal responsibility is irrelevant to establishing the crime. Accordingly, when dealing with error regarding duress, duress is an excuse that is based on the absence of a reasonable expectation of lawful conduct, and only the subjective perception matters. Therefore, from a strict perspective, error regarding duress is irrelevant, and only the actor’s perception of the situation of duress serves as the criterion for judgment. As a result, even if a situation of duress exists, the defense of duress cannot be established if the actor does not perceive it, and where no situation of duress exists but the actor mistakenly believes otherwise, the defense of duress can be established. However, an additional issue arises whether a reasonable basis for the actor’s belief is required for the duress defense. Contrary to the majority view, I contend that an honest belief alone is sufficient in light of the rationale underlying the defense of duress.

ABSTRACT. How could merely having something be wrong? This Article gives an account of wrongfulness of possession, as opposed to law enforcement benefits of criminalizing it. This Article presents three types of possession offenses. First, possession may be an inchoate offense akin to incomplete attempt. Second, possession may be a regulatory offense resulting from violation of laws that exist in order to keep the level of certain types of danger tolerably low. Third, possession may be an offense of participating in a market that the state seeks to eliminate. By focusing on laws criminalizing possession of guns, child pornography, and drugs in detail as illustration, this Article argues that laws criminalizing possession for the most part do not criminalize the wrong of harming others or risking harm to others but rather criminalize the wrong of interfering with the government’s attempt to reduce the overall amount of unwanted harm in society.

ABSTRACT. Following the enactment of the new Constitutional Court Procedure Act (CCPA) on January 25, 2025, the Taiwan Constitutional Court, composed of fifteen Grand Justices, must reach a quorum of ten to declare the impugned law or final court decision unconstitutional. Since the expiration of the terms of seven Grand Justices on November 1, 2024, only eight remain in office—insufficient to meet the statutory quorum. Amid an acute political deadlock between the legislature and the executive, President Lai twice nominated fourteen candidates, none of whom received confirmation from the parliamentary majority. This unprecedented constitutional impasse, caused jointly by partisan confrontation and the new procedural framework, has given rise to what commentators now call a “Dismissal Order Constitutional Court.” Within this dysfunctional court, the eight incumbent Grand Justices have divided into two camps: the activists, who argue that the quorum clause itself violates the Constitution and should declare the quorum clause unconstitutional, and the conservatives, who insist that the Court must await new appointments that satisfy the statutory quorum before issuing any decision. Intriguingly, both factions invoke Germany’s doctrine of Verfassungstreue—constitutional loyalty—as a theoretical justification for their opposing positions.

Against this backdrop, the present article traces the intellectual genealogy and contemporary reinterpretation of the principle of constitutional loyalty. It revisits Wolf-Rüdiger Schenke’s 1977 formulation of constitutional organ loyalty (Verfassungsorgantreue), especially the aspect of Judicial Self-Restraint(I), and examines how this doctrine was introduced, adapted, and re-contextualized within Taiwanese constitutional scholarship and judicial practice (II). It also analyzes the divergent understandings of constitutional (organ) loyalty expressed by the two camps of justices, illustrating how the doctrine has evolved from a principle of institutional cooperation into a constitutional crisis. Finally, from the perspective of constitutional democracy, the article seeks to elucidate the democratic dimension of constitutional loyalty within the spectrum between parliamentary and semi-presidential systems, and to develop a constitutional theory of the Court that reconciles constitutional loyalty with democratic self-defense.

ABSTRACT. The past quarter-century has witnessed democracy and the rule of law challenged by the rise of populism in many parts of the world. While populism and its threats to democracy have been much studied in political science, legal philosophers have paid scant attention to its impacts on legal practice. To fill this literature gap, the current paper seeks to shed new light on a long-standing jurisprudential issue, namely the validity of law, in the context of populist constitutional amendments that undermine constitutional principles. Its method is philosophical thought experiments, informed by notable cases in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The paper begins with a depiction of the rise of populism worldwide and a review of relevant studies in comparative politics and comparative law. Next, it sets its objective: to assess the plausibility of each of four primary views on legal validity——exclusive and inclusive positivism, natural law, and interpretivism——in the context of controversial constitutional changes proposed by the populist president or ruling party. The paper concludes by noting the relevance of constitutional order to validity judgments.

ABSTRACT. In his Rationale of Judicial Evidence (1827), Jeremy Bentham addresses questions of judicial procedure, particularly how a fact can be considered as evidence and how that evidence can be used by the judge to reach a fair decision. However, it appears that 'the law of evidence, as we understand the term, was largely non-existent as late as the middle of the eighteenth century' (Langbein, 1983). As Stephen Landsman (1989) points out, echoing Thayer (1898), Wigmore (1908) and Holdsworth (1903), the rules governing the use of evidence in trials changed significantly at the end of the 18th century. This change was the introduction of adversarial procedures into trials. This means that, by the beginning of the 19th century, trials were seen as adversarial confrontations, and the emergence and spread of adversarial ideas can be traced in the writings of theorists and jurists at the end of the 18th century. To understand this evolution, I will examine the concepts developed by Gilbert, particularly his 'best evidence rule'. I will then examine the gradual and radical developments proposed by Peake (1801), Evans (1826), and Phillipps (1817). Finally, I will analyse the elements that constitute the rupture between Bentham and his predecessors: the introduction of adversarial procedures into trials, and the new roles of judges and lawyers during them.

ABSTRACT. In 1842, the Unitarian minister John Layhe began keeping a notebook in which he recorded information about his activities as Minister to the Poor in Manchester. This was an appointment given by the Unitarian Domestic Mission Society, which was concerned with visiting working-class households to improve their condition. In his journal, Layhe set out a number of rules for visiting. One of these rules was “to elevate their character and habits”. The passage highlights the significance of character in social reform activities, with a view to turn working-class people into virtuous members of the new democratic order these social reformers strove to implement. The political significance of the concept of character in Victorian Manchester is considerable, as this concept enabled social reformers to distinguish between the people who were deserving of aid from those who did not deserve it. In other terms, the concept of character is crucial to trace a clear difference between deserving and undeserving poor, a well-known distinction of Victorian political discourse. In turn, the problem of poverty had a marked political dimension: from the point of view of the elites of the new industrial cities such as Manchester, finding appropriate ways to deal with the problem of poverty amounted to establish their own legitimacy as appropriate rulers of society. The concept of character plays a pivotal role in the activities of these middle-class social reformers, who expressed Manchester’s new elite at the eve of the Victorian age; a time in which Manchester was the most important industrial centre of the world, and the epitome of an emerging political, economic and social order. In this paper, I will focus on the social reform activities of the Manchester Unitarians, an influential group of Dissenters in the industrial north of England. Understanding the character of individuals was essential for grasping their way of life, their identity, and how they could be educated to become respectable members of the new democratic society. I will examine how the concept of character was employed to generate social knowledge and its political significance in Victorian Manchester during the ‘Hungry Forties’, a period characterised by economic turmoil, social unrest and by the promise of a rising democratic order in the 1832 Reform Act’s aftermath.

ABSTRACT. Bentham's plan for the Panopticon is known through Foucault's influential book of Discipline and Punish (1975). According to Foucault, the Panopticon is "the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form." Foucault argued that the primary goal of the Panopticon is to create a state of conscious visibility among the inmates, ensuring the automatic functioning of power.

Foucault's influential interpretation of the Panopticon does not place it well within Bentham's overall theory of law. A better interpretation of the Panopticon is provided by placing it within his theory of indirect legislation.

Bentham's theory of human motivation was actually quite nuanced. In A Table of the Springs of Action (1817), he outlines a sophisticated psychological process of how motivation leads to action. The idea of pleasure or pain relief initially creates "velleity" (weak volition), during which human understanding evaluates whether the expected pleasure outweighs potential costs. If favorable, the individual selects means to achieve it, and velleity becomes full volition that results in action. Importantly, Bentham viewed the perceived means themselves as motivational forces—they function as incentives by increasing the certainty of the desired outcome. Bentham argues that the necessary and sufficient conditions for voluntary human actions are "will or effectual inclination to cause the act to take place," "knowledge of the means or expedients requisite for that purpose," and "power to set these expedients to work." Thus, the means are composed of knowledge and power.

Bentham's theory of motivation mentioned above is practically developed in his idea of indirect legislation. Through indirect legislation, Bentham sought to reduce motivational forces for crime without resorting to legal punishment aimed directly at potential criminals by influencing the will (i.e., interests), knowledge, and power of those concerned.

Indeed, the Panopticon was based on Bentham's idea of indirect legislation. Bentham tried to decrease the power of inmates—and thus the certainty of the desired outcome, which is escape—by increasing the power of the inspectors of the Panopticon prison. Bentham certainly contrived many such measures as "inspection-galleries," "inspection-lanterns," and the like to make the inmates believe in the "omnipresence" of inspection. But his intention was to provide "safe custody" by influencing the power of inmates and decreasing the certainty of the desired outcome, which would affect their motivation. Ensuring the "automatic functioning of power" through the internalization of norms was not his agenda.

ABSTRACT. This paper aims to highlight the theoretical and historical aspects of the idea of settler colonies developed by J. S. Mill (1806-73) during the 1830s to the 1860s. In his Considerations on Representative Government, Chapter 18 “Of the Government of Dependencies by a Free State” argues that countries possess territories through conquest or colonisation. He differentiates between two classes of dependencies: (i) those with a civilisation similar to that of the ruling country, like Australia and Canada, which can implement representative government; and (ii) those, such as India, that do not share this civilisation and are not yet capable of establishing such a government. This distinction reflects a common Victorian perspective on “settler colonies” versus “dependent colonies.” Before Considerations, Mill had developed an interest in the former during the 1830s from a utilitarian viewpoint. In 1833, the South Australian Association was established to form a colonial government for Australia, and Mill became a member alongside George Grote and others. He published an article titled “Wakefield’s The New British Province of South Australia” the following year. This paper first introduces Mill’s writings on Australia and examines his support for Wakefield and settler colonies throughout the 1830s. Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796-1862), a politician who formulated the theory of systematic colonisation, argued for state-sponsored migration from Britain to the colonies. The primary rationale was to transfer surplus goods, population, and capital from the mother country to the colonies, promoting ongoing economic exchange between the two areas to foster mutual development. Secondly, while influenced by Wakefield’s arguments, this paper discusses how Mill came to view settler colonies as a potential solution to the land shortage and the excess of labour and population in Britain. This perspective is elaborated in his Principles of Political Economy (1848), where he developed the idea that a colonial policy focused on migration could help resolve Britain’s various challenges. However, it is essential to note that Mill’s justification for colonial rule also civilised “the barbarous world.” Thirdly, this paper will argue one of the critical points where conflicts arose between indigenous peoples and settlers in colonised territories. According to previous studies, Mill began to focus on the issue of native inhabitants in New Zealand from the 1860s. By referring to the distinction between civilisation and barbarism as a criterion within Mill’s theory of government, this paper will consider his ambiguous advocacy for self-government and maintaining colonial control.

ABSTRACT. It is generally accepted that legal systems consist of man-made norms. That is, legal norms in any jurisdiction are posited with the intentional actions by human authorities. Recently, legal philosophers availed themselves of the philosophical theories of artifacts to tackle the main issues in general jurisprudence, such as the ontology of law, the normativity of law, the functions of law, and the methodology for jurisprudential investigations.

The artifactuality of law entails that the existence and operation of a legal system depend, to a considerable extent, on the mental states of its authors, namely the members of the legal system. The basic idea of the artifact theory of law is that a legal system emerges only when a relevant group of people collectively recognize the legal system as existing. Unlike simple and unstructured normative systems whose existence relies on the collective acceptance/recognition by the general population, legal systems are structured and institutional normative systems and there must be a division of labor in regard to such collective recognition. To be more specific, both legal officials and ordinary citizens are engaged in the collective acceptance/recognition of a legal system, but in quite different ways.

With regard to the recognitional attitude towards the existence of a legal system on the part of legal officials, most theorists adopt H. L. A. Hart’s view that such official recognition of law is manifested in legal officials’ acceptance of the criteria of legal validity. However, views diverge on how ordinary citizens manifest their collective recognition of a legal system. Some argue that citizens indirectly accept a legal system by recognizing the institutional status of legal officials and the corresponding powers of identifying, creating, and applying the laws. Some others put more emphasis on the role of citizens, claiming that the acceptance of a legal system by citizens is grounded in their acceptance of associated deontology and readiness to obey it. After examining the relevant theoretical accounts, this paper suggests an alternative explanation of the way in which ordinary citizens contribute to the collective acceptance of a legal system, which is focused on their exercise of legal powers to adjust normative relationships.

ABSTRACT. In both everyday and theoretical discourse about law, we often refer to legal systems that belong to imagined or constructed worlds, ranging from ideal social models such as perfectly democratic regimes to legal orders portrayed in fiction, including movies, anime, comics, and games. However, although general jurisprudence has long engaged with legal fictions in actual institutional contexts, it has rarely examined the metatheoretical criteria that determine how statements about law can be properly represented in imagined or constructed worlds. In this paper, I examine the representation of law in such contexts. I suggest that the traditional problem of legal existence should be replaced by a broader problem of representation across multiple worlds. This approach adopts a broadly Goodmanian metaphysical irrealism, according to which the actual world does not enjoy privileged metaphysical exclusivity in the investigation of the concept of law. Practices of fictional worldmaking are not merely argumentative or expressive devices, but constitute genuine objects of jurisprudential inquiry. They allow us to treat complex fictional world-building as contributing to the revision of legal theory and to its aspiration to universality, while also inviting a reconsideration of the philosophical space occupied by general jurisprudence.

ABSTRACT. While many legal philosophers deny that the existence or application of coercion is essential to legal systems, a popular alternative view maintains that legal systems must at least authorise coercion. This view – that legal systems necessarily authorise coercion – is often thought to have significant explanatory power: it is said to account for legal systems’ normativity, their ability to secure peace, their distinctiveness qua normative systems, and even their point. In this paper, I examine different conceptions of authorisation and assess their purported explanatory power. I argue that none of the conceptions considered can successfully fulfil the explanatory roles legal philosophers have assigned to them; roles that would support viewing the authorisation of coercion as an essential feature of legal systems. I also argue that even a broader view – according to which legal systems necessarily claim the right to authorise coercion – fails to perform these explanatory functions. Despite rejecting authorisation (or the claim to it) as an essential feature of legal systems, I argue that the authorisation of coercion is not normatively irrelevant. Drawing on Jonathan Dancy’s work, I propose a more modest account: that authorisation functions as an enabler. It does not generate reasons to act or to obey the law, but it removes institutional barriers that would otherwise prevent pre-existing reasons from supporting coercive enforcement. Authorisation also plays an epistemic role in rendering coercive acts intelligible as acts of the system, rather than rogue interventions. While this account does not vindicate stronger claims about coercion’s necessity, it clarifies how authorisation contributes to institutional coherence, legal accountability, and legitimacy.

ABSTRACT. L. L. Fuller is widely understood as a staunch critic of H. L. A. Hart, and their differences are best seen in their disagreement over the relationship between law and morality, as symbolized by the Hart-Fuller debate. Yet, beneath these views lie another intriguing contrast: the relationship between law and coercion (force). While Hart, in *The Concept of Law*, attempts to present a rule-based concept of law, he acknowledges that humans, being non-angelic, actually need coercive guarantees through natural justification (‘the minimum content of natural law’), thereby providing an appropriate distance to the overly close relationship between law and coercion in John Austin's command theory of law. If you turn your eyes to Fuller’s major work *The Morality of Law*, Fuller not only defends the famous intrinsic morality of law but also criticizes the position that describes the exercise of physical force as a characteristic of law. He does not take much of, though not denies, the claim that law must have minimal effectiveness, stating that there is nothing particularly worthwhile to say. Fuller also rejects Hart's natural justification based on his aspirational view of humanity. While there's no need to emphasize the differences between the two views, Fuller seems to be quite indifferent to the debate over the relationship between law and coercion. However, upon further reflection, Hart's natural justification—that is, the truism that humans live in less-than-optimal environments and are capable of harming one another—and his affirmation of the coercive character of law based on this truism, seems like an argument worthy of being taken seriously even by Fuller. Starting from this question, this paper focuses on the differences of opinion over the power of law that underlie the well-known Hart-Fuller debate. In particular, it examines, as a legal philosophical issue, the role that law's contentious characteristic, coercion, plays in the horizontal and vertical relationships it creates. In doing so, I also attempt to shed new light on the relationship between law and coercion, which has been the subject of much research in recent years.

ABSTRACT. Digital corporations (social media platforms, technology corporations) with a power that through the algorithmic pre-empting can influence the tone or content of the discussion and even limit access to digital services have an immense influence on political life and democratic processes. Hence, the links between the markets and politics became tighter than ever before. In this context, form the rulemaking point of view, three following issues arise: Should we regulate? If digital platforms, which remain in the hands of private actors, are used in the course of democratic processes in the public sphere, the answer seems clear. They should be subject to regulation that guarantees equal access to digital services deployed in democratic processes (the digital divide problem). Regulations should also include solutions to protect citizens from manipulation, disinformation and ensure the protection of the right to privacy. How to regulate? The regulatory approach when protecting democratic processes should be probably top down. Standards to protect democracy, fundamental rights, societal values (pluralism of political life, rule of law, transparency) should be set by democratically legitimised public actors like states and international law based organisations. Is multi-level governance giving private actors the possibility to adopt their own codes of conduct, in the case of e-democracy, the right approach? In some jurisdictions, as in the EU currently, there is a noticeable regulatory trend: the activities of digital corporations become subject to comprehensive legislative initiatives. The process of regulatory federalisation is interesting in this context - the EU legislator is reaching for regulations (e.g. AI Act, Data Act, Data Marketing Act, Data Services Act), which guarantee a unified approach across member states and have an extraterritorial impact. Although market-oriented and economically driven, by embedding them in the context of EU values, they are relevant to the infrastructure used in democratic processes. In this way, the EU influences the activities of global technological actors in an attempt to identify standards by which EU values would provide a benchmark setting the boundaries of acceptable activities. By doing this, it limits their self-regulatory attempts. Perhaps it does so for the right reasons believing the democracy protection cannot be entirely trusted to market-driven institutions. Whether this pattern is to be followed more widely, certainly deserves a debate from a legal, philosophical, ethical and societal perspectives.

ABSTRACT. Digital technologies in healthcare, such as mobile health and telemedicine, are often presented as instruments for democratizing healthcare. They promise to expand access, reduce costs, and overcome barriers of distance, appearing to bridge longstanding gaps between patients, professionals, and institutions. However, these technologies also risk deepening existing inequalities, first at the level of access and inclusion, where unequal infrastructures and uneven digital literacy can exclude large portions of the population from effective participation in digital health systems; and at the level of design and governance, since algorithmic bias, opacity, and shifting forms of technological authority may weaken the democratic foundations of healthcare. This paper asks whether digital health genuinely contributes to democratic healthcare, understood as equality not only in access but also in participation and governance. It begins by situating healthcare as a relationship of power and draws on the idea of democratic relational ethics, which emphasizes that democracy depends on the fair distribution of resources and on the capacity of institutions to sustain relationships of recognition, participation, and accountability between citizens and the systems that govern them. Applied to healthcare, this means that the relationships between patients and professionals, between citizens and health institutions, and increasingly between citizens and digital infrastructures, must be structured by mutual recognition and non-domination. From this perspective, democratic healthcare requires equality at three interdependent levels: access and inclusion, design and representation, and governance and oversight. The analysis first examines accessibility. Digital health initiatives such as Estonia’s national eHealth infrastructure or Uganda’s mTrac platform demonstrate its potential to broaden reach and coordination, but persistent divides in connectivity, digital skills, and socioeconomic status limit participation. It then turns to the design of digital health systems, where biased datasets, opaque algorithms, and corporate dominance determine who is represented and whose knowledge counts. Democratic healthcare requires participatory forms of design that grant citizens epistemic standing in defining technological priorities. The paper concludes that digital health can serve democracy only if it cultivates relationships of equality, recognition, and shared responsibility. Healthcare democratization requires access to technology and also participation in defining its purposes, limits, and moral direction. In this sense, it constitutes a relational model of democratic healthcare in which citizens act as co-authors of the digital systems that shape their health and wellbeing.

ABSTRACT. The Cambridge Analytica scandal marked a watershed moment in the public’s understanding of how data-driven technologies can erode democratic processes. At the heart of the scandal was not only the unlawful collection of personal data, but the use of algorithmic profiling and microtargeting to manipulate voter behavior, effectively reconfiguring the relationship between individuals, information, and democratic decision-making. This paper argues that such practices reveal a deeper crisis of relational democracy—one that legal and philosophical frameworks have yet to adequately confront. This crisis is not merely technological or regulatory. It concerns the transformation of the legal subject itself. Liberal democratic theory, and much of modern jurisprudence, presumes an autonomous, reasoning individual engaged in public discourse. However, in digital environments shaped by opaque AI systems, algorithmic recommendation engines, and behaviorally targeted content, the autonomy of this subject is systematically undermined. As citizens become subjects of algorithmic governance, their relationships—with the state, with each other, and with the legal system—are refracted through invisible infrastructures of influence and surveillance. This paper reexamines the normative role of law in sustaining the relational conditions of democracy. Specifically, it addresses three interrelated questions: 1.What becomes of democratic legitimacy when public discourse is fragmented by algorithmic targeting? 2.How should law respond to environments where consent is manufactured and influence is automated? 3.Can legal frameworks preserve autonomy and trust in digitally mediated relationships? The analysis engages both positive law (e.g., data protection, electoral law, and AI ethics) and legal-philosophical questions about the nature of subjectivity and responsibility in the algorithmic age. Ultimately, the paper argues for a relational conception of democratic legality—one that centers not only rights and rules but also the ethical and epistemic integrity of human relationships as mediated by technology. As democracy increasingly unfolds in online spaces governed by corporate algorithms, the task of law must be rethought: not simply to regulate harms after the fact, but to protect the preconditions of mutual recognition, deliberation, and agency upon which democratic life depends.

ABSTRACT. Democratic legitimacy relies on principles of deliberation and agonism. However, online platforms—where algorithmic mediation results in fragmented 'publics'—challenge the traditional view of the 'public sphere'. This paper examines an emerging form of governance—commentary-based moderation—a specific type of distributed vigilante moderation that fragmentation facilitates.

Commentary creators build and solidify authority—while enacting private justice—outside traditional legitimacy sources, facilitated by bubble legitimacy and parasocial trust. I argue that such authority is amplified through algorithmic filtering and economic incentives like rewarding controversy encourages practices like commentary-baiting through targeting audience bases of larger creators.

I differentiate this inquiry from being extended analysis on 'cancel culture' as the aim is not to determine the morality but rather the conditions that provide such actions with legitimate authority.

Governance in technologically-mediated environments is very much subject to the architecture that shapes legitimacy within it. Bubble legitimacy can act as a diagnostic concept for better understanding of how fragmentation enables authority without traditional sources.

ABSTRACT. As issues concerning human rights become matters of shared concern across the international community, a concept termed “global constitutionalism” is being proposed within the transnational realm of international law. This “global constitutionalism” seeks to present a new fundamental framework for re-examining the relationship between international law and domestic law, enabling judicial systems to provide cross-border remedies for human rights violations. Robert Alexy's theory of constitutional rights and proportionality has gained attention as a human rights theory and judicial review doctrine applicable to such judicial practices.

The fundamental characteristic of his theory lies in its reliance on a non-positivist conception of law, which sees law and morality as intrinsically connected. It holds that human rights and constitutional rights are principles embodying supra-positive values, and that the interpretation of fundamental rights involves realizing, as ideally as possible, the principles embedded within the positive constitution. Consequently, whenever state law raises the possibility of unjust infringements upon human and constitutional rights, courts are perpetually required to appeal to the ideal dimension of the constitution and interpret it in a manner that morally correctly realizes these rights.　

This study examines the applicability of Alexy's theory of constitutional rights and proportionality as an approach to human rights protection. In doing so, I will examine the various debates surrounding his model, while also comparing it with opposing theories that seek to establish human rights on a legal positivist basis.

ABSTRACT. During the COVID-19 pandemic, citizens in most parts of the world experienced quarantine, isolation in medical facilities, and restrictions on human communication in many areas of activity. Some of these measures might be justified as requirements of human rights, but at the same time, human rights might also contain requirements that are related to social relationship. Recently, philosophical authors, including Kimberley Brownlee and her commentators, started investigations on the human right to social relationship. This line of inquiry has eventually led Henry Shue, a highly influential human rights philosopher known for his work on basic rights, to conceive of ‘the right to opportunities for social contact’ as ‘more basic than “basic”’. The aim of this presentation is, firstly, to distinguish five types of influential arguments for the human right to social relationship—namely, empirical, phenomenological, respect-based, reciprocity-based, and instrumental arguments—and to evaluate them. The criteria for evaluation are as follows : whether the argument can justify (1) appropriate right holders—whether the justified right can regard appropriate persons as right holders ; (2) appropriate scope—whether the justified right includes appropriate objects such as liberties, powers, immunities, and benefits; and (3) appropriate weight—whether the justified right can possess priority over other prima facie rights and social goals. If the justified right meets the criteria, we cannot but accept moral force of the right. I claim that empirical arguments, while illuminating, cannot robustly justify the rights of many rights holders. I also claim that instrumental and reciprocity arguments cannot explain the weight of the right. From these investigations, I support phenomenological and respect-based arguments, and I outline some points for their further development.

ABSTRACT. In this presentation, I focus on how identification with the ‘we’ of humanity, can be understood as a necessary pre-condition for human rights subjectivity. This argument is extracted from my forthcoming book, Phenomenology of Human Rights: Selves, Others and the Possibility of Social Transformation . While the book pursues the wider project of phenomenological inquiry into human rights subjectivity, in particular by interrogating what it means to experience the self as ‘human’ for the purposes of identifying as a human rights holder; this presentation focuses on the critical insights that a phenomenological perspective provides for understanding empathy as a relational experience.

Specifically, I critique how previous human rights accounts link empathy with human rights by adopting a simulation model, which views empathy as a process of placing the self in the shoes of the other. Such a simulation model collapses the distinction between the ‘I’ and ‘you’ required for the formation of a ‘we’. To elaborate this position, I draw on the work of phenomenologists Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, and argue that, at least in a minimal sense, empathy should be understood as a perceptual process of grasping the other as an other. Resultingly, I contend that a phenomenological conception of empathy is not only able to maintain the distinction between the self and other but better explains how one is able to access the alienation required to experience the self as part of the abstract category of ‘humanity’.

To make this more concrete, I connect my remarks on empathy to the examination in my book of how human rights are implemented within United Nations peace operations. I briefly outline how a relational understanding of human rights is currently incorporated into human rights law and UN practice and policy. In doing so, I advance a description of human rights subjectivity rooted in the role human rights are seen to play in organising political and social relationships within the process of democratic transformation. I therefore conclude by linking the phenomenological description of empathy, as a pre-condition of human rights subjectivity, to contemporary questions about the future of democracies organised around human rights principles.

ABSTRACT. If the world were simple, we wouldn’t need law. We could just follow the dictates of morality. But in a complicated world, law has morally normative force because it delivers law-related values, such as reliance, consistency, coordination, and conflict avoidance. Such values give us reason to form legal systems in the first place and then follow their dictates. Sometimes, the morally right thing to do is to ignore simple moral principles to work within a morally valuable legal system.

An important implication of this view is that the value of law is largely an empirical matter. The value of law depends on its ability to actually deliver reliance, consistency, coordination, conflict avoidance, and so on. We can’t decide from the armchair how much these considerations matter without real-world investigation. The law is a blackhole for two principal reasons: (1) assessing the value of legal compliance requires a comparison of case-specific moral values to law-related moral values in ways that are rarely addressed by judges or legal scholars (the “Aggregation Claim”) and (2) the central normative force of law derives from empirical matters that are rarely quantified by judges or legal scholars, either in particular cases or even in general (“the Blackhole Claim”). I draw four lessons along the way.

ABSTRACT. In The Long Arc of Legality, David Dyzenhaus seeks to bridge the divide between positivist and natural law theories by arguing that viewing law as composed of positive rules necessarily implies that wicked rules have a weaker claim at legality. His argument is that the very act of positing a rule, in the fundamental sense of making it explicit, entails that this rule cannot be applied arbitrarily and is subject to public scrutiny. Wicked rules would thus have a weaker claim at legality in at least two senses: (1) rules that are so arbitrary that they cannot meaningfully be said to have been posited can simply not be regarded as legal; and (2) wicked rules will tend to be excluded from legal records by public scrutiny. Following this logic, Dyzenhaus concludes that “the long arc of legality bends toward justice.” From his perspective, this conclusion can be exclusively grounded on the formal fact that the existence of a legal system requires the positing of rules. In contrast, I argue that Dyzenhaus’s conclusion holds only if such positing is accompanied by a rejection of arbitrariness based on a substantive respect for human dignity defined in terms of respect for personal autonomy. This leads me to defend Dyzenhaus’s conclusions, but on different grounds that are likely to be more difficult to accept for positivists than original argument in The Long Arc of Legality.

ABSTRACT. Judith Shklar’s theory of injustice has been receiving increasing attention in contemporary political and legal philosophy. In The Faces of Injustice, she argues that the operative legal system in democratic polities is inherently problematic because it not only produces injustices but also tends to overlook them. To address injustice, Shklar states that democratic societies must foster civic engagement and ensure political conditions that prioritize the voices of victims. Although it is undeniable that the institutional framework in her argument remains underdeveloped, scholarship has thus far disproportionately highlighted Shklar’s insistence on paying heed to victims’ voices alone, thereby overshadowing other crucial institutional dimensions of her thought. Indeed, recent literature on injustice influenced by Shklar tends to seek solutions in civic virtue or civic ethos, rather than in institutional reform. However, Shklar, who envisioned a society consisting of claims and counterclaims, found a remedy for injustice in the procedural possibility of law amendment. As is evident in The Liberalism of Fear, Shklar regarded the rule of law as an essential element of democratic society and rights as the preconditions of liberty. The liberalism of fear thus fundamentally rests on the liberalism of natural rights inherited from John Locke, yet it may even be considered an attempt to go beyond that tradition. Within this understanding, I argue that Shklar sought a response to injustice by reconceptualizing the idea of rights. According to Shklar, the concept of rights is twofold–positive and negative. This presentation clarifies these two aspects of rights by analyzing Shklar’s view of the legal system, political liberty, and the demands imposed by the liberalism of fear. In this sense, I contend that Shklar primarily aimed to construct an institutional remedy for democratic societies, while her interest in civic ethos was secondary.

ABSTRACT. This paper addresses the problem of democratic legitimacy under epistemic uncertainty by challenging the standard account of epistemic democracy, which holds that democratic legitimacy derives from truth-tracking ability. I argue that the primary epistemic aim of deliberative democracy, at least in circumstances of epistemic uncertainty, is to reach rationally justified decisions rather than to track procedure-independent correct outcomes. My argument consists of three steps:

First, epistemic uncertainty drives a wedge between justification and truth. If the justification of political decisions depends on uncertain beliefs liable to be false, justified decisions cannot reliably track correct outcomes.

Second, I examine epistemic norms of political deliberation, one of which permits using uncertain but justified beliefs as premises for decisions. Democratic decision-making relying on uncertain empirical or normative premises is not irrational, because what we ought rationally to do depends on our beliefs about decision-relevant facts rather than objective facts themselves.

Third, I address reasonable practical disagreements arising from epistemic peer disagreements. To resolve such disagreements, democratic legislatures must choose between conflicting but equally justifiable beliefs to justify their decisions. Although such choices are epistemically arbitrary, this arbitrariness is acceptable when constrained by the structural requirement of rational justification.

ABSTRACT. Practical Decision Making and the Problem of Framework Choice

According to standard decision theory, practical decision making should be guided by at least two factors: an epistemic assessment of the possibility or probability (Pr) of the consequences of an action; and the practical valuation of such consequences in terms of, e.g., their utilities (u). For the epistemic assessment via probabilistic reasoning, the question of how to come up with relevant probabilities Pr is of utmost importance. In this talk, we want to address this question from the perspective of an account of logical probability as suggested, e.g., by Rudolf Carnap. According to this account, one extracts the needed probabilities from the used linguistic framework. However, if one does so, then the question of how to practically select such a framework arises. Taking this to be a practical question, suggests applying the decision theoretical framework also to the question of framework choice. But then, it seems, that to gain relevant probabilities, one needs to presuppose already a probability-based decision theoretic framework. So, it seems, an infinite regress on the choice of probabilistic frameworks can be triggered (cf. Steinberger 2016). This would pose a significant problem for a logical account of probabilities. A way to resolve this problem with respect to the general question of framework choice is indicated in (Carus 2017). In this talk, we will study a more holistic explicative notion of rationality and framework choice and apply it to Carnap’s discussion and practice of choosing different frameworks of probabilistic reasoning. Our main working hypothesis is that by applying a holistic notion of rationality and explication also at the level of framework choice (as outlined in Carus 2017) instead of a purely practical decision theoretic notion (as indicated in Carnap 1971, Steinberger 2016), one can address the outlined problem of an infinite regress. As we will argue, the reason for this that the explicative methodology allows for non-vicious circularity (cf. Carnap 1957), as is, e.g., also implemented in modern reconstructions of the explicative methodology in terms of a reflective equilibrium (cf., e.g., Brun 2016, 2020).

ABSTRACT. Why should central banks be politically independent? The standard account, primarily from economists, is that an independent central bank can resist pressures from politicians, who prefer loose monetary policies that could stimulate the economy but risk high inflation. The standard account limits the role of central bank to inflation control. However, monetary policy affects not only inflation but also economic growth, unemployment, and asset valuation—which could significantly exacerbate inequality. This puts central banks under political pressure: how could a political institution that benefits the public unequally not be democratically accountable? A better account of central bank independence, I argue, is that central banks must be trustworthy for their monetary policies to be effective. To illustrate my point, I analyse an important policy tool of central bank, forward guidance (central-bank communication with the market about economic and policy expectations) to show that central banks become powerless if the market does not trust them. Moreover, to earn trust from the market, it is helpful if central banks can be independent of political pressure. The reason is that trustworthiness requires epistemic and practical reliability. The market would trust central banks only if central bank can assess the market conditions correctly and swiftly respond to changes in market conditions. But if politicians can effectively influence central banks’ policies, then the market will not trust them to act correctly and swiftly. For central banks to function well, therefore, they must earn trust from the market. The trustworthiness of central banks will be threatened if they are not politically independent. One contribution of my account of central bank independence is that it can be extended to other politically independent institutions, such as legal systems or academia. This highlights a crucial difference between them and political institutions. Unlike independent institutions which have to earn trust from the public, political institutions, at least in democratic countries, do not. To put it differently, while independent institutions are founded on public trust, democracy is founded on public distrust, which is why democracy requires measures such as regular elections, separation of powers, checks and balances, and the rule of law.

ABSTRACT. One explanation for why voting problems in public choice theory do not occur in reality is due to senior party members setting the agenda which in turn can determine which agenda wins. This seems to run counter to democratic values. We might say that there are two strands to why the seniority issue is a problem. The first is arbitrariness - it turns out that social choice shows us that the way we set the agenda of items can affect the overall winner. The second is non-representativeness - legislators should be representing their constituents in representative democracies; instead they are following party or committee politics. This paper argues that this kind of arbitrariness and non-representation is inevitable under any model of democracy. The people and policies we vote on are decided often by political parties and it is standard with party discipline that party members follow the instructions of senior members. Further I show that the threats of the seniority problem to both metaphysical and normative reasons for adopting legislative intent is not fatal. 

ABSTRACT. Taiwan, as an emerging democracy, is currently facing a democratic crisis, which could be observed from the perspective of constitutionalism. Since the formation of the current Legislative Yuan (National Assembly), challenges to Taiwan's democracy have been launched from within the Legislative Yuan. First of all, in terms of procedure, for major controversial bills, the majority of the Legislative Yuan, composed of Kuomintang legislators and People's Party legislators, has almost deprived the minority of the rights as legislators through serious abuse of the rules of procedure, and voted to pass these laws in a violent manner by the majority. Secondly, on the substantive side, these laws seriously violate the constitutional principle of separation of powers and gradually dismantle the separation of powers in the government system, especially against executive and judicial powers, which constitutes an act of usurpation of powers. Although the law to seize the executive power, that is, the amendment to the "Legislative Yuan Exercise of Powers Act", was eventually declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court, the Legislative Yuan still gradually eroded the executive power through other law enactments and boycotts of the budget. In order to eliminate the main obstacle to its unconstitutional seizure of power, the judicial review, the Legislative Yuan has amended the Constitutional Procedure Law and not passed the new justices, resulting in the paralysis of the Constitutional Court. In the face of various acts that undermine the constitutional system of the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan's civil society wanted to change the seat distribution of the Legislative Yuan and launched a campaign called the "Great Recall" to launch a recall of regional legislators in 32 constituencies. Unfortunately, this movement ultimately failed, and not a single legislator was removed. In the face of various controversial acts of the Legislative Yuan, there is a view that this is only a common political act in most parliaments in normal democracies, and there is no constitutional problem. However, this article argues that from the perspective of constitutionalism, it can be found that, on the one hand, due to the extreme abuse of the procedural process, the Legislative Yuan has undergone qualitative changes, subverting its own democratic nature. On the other hand, by passing many highly controversial laws that are unconstitutional, especially by greatly weakening the executive power and paralyzing the Constitutional Court, not only are these laws unconstitutional, but the constitutional separation of powers system has been seriously damaged.

ABSTRACT. What roles did constitutional scholars play in the Japanese total war system and how did this relate to their notable contribution to post-war democratization? This presentation addresses the question by focusing on Suzuki Yasuzō (1904-1983), an eminent constitutional scholar who bridged the inter-war and post-war constitutional theories. He is widely known as a key member of the Constitutional Research Association (Kenpō kenkyūkai), whose draft significantly influenced the Government Section (GS) of the GHQ/SCAP (General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers) during the constitutional revision process in early 1946. This led to his reputation as the ‘substantial drafter of the post-war Japanese Constitution.’ Recently, however, some researchers have called for a more cautious evaluation, arguing that previous studies have often overlooked the complexity and continuity of his intellectual development from the 1930s to the 1940s. The core paradox of his career lies in his background: Suzuki initially dedicated himself to Marxist constitutional theory, which resulted in severe persecution, imprisonment, and exclusion from the Imperial University, forcing him to live as a marginalized independent scholar. Surprisingly, despite these circumstances, he was an active member of various state policy organizations and study groups contributing to the total war effort. Why, then, did a scholar who had suffered state oppression cooperate so enthusiastically with the regime? Crucially, how was he able to immediately take on the essential tasks of constitutional revision and post-war democratization? This presentation argues that Suzuki’s actions were driven by a continuous survival strategy aimed at achieving institutional and public recognition to counter the dominant authority of Imperial University professors. Through an analysis of his organizational activities and theoretical writings, it is contended that Suzuki cultivated a unique, competing identity outside the official academic field. Most importantly, this presentation demonstrates the logical continuity of his practical skills: the techniques of organization and mass mobilization developed during his earliest time as a Marxist activist were sequentially diverted into the management of total war study groups and ultimately transferred to the foundation of post-war democratic organizations, such as the Constitutional Research Association itself. This study offers a new interpretation of Suzuki’s life as a successful organizational strategist, fundamentally revising our understanding of the resources that laid the foundations of post-war Japanese constitutional studies.

ABSTRACT. For years, liberal legal systems have been a guarantee of democracy. However at the same time populist political forces have come to power in several Eastern European countries. These forces have led to the complete or partial deconstruction, even corruption, of the liberal legal order. This has been made possible by their influence over appointing certain state bodies, the relative impunity of those entrusted with these functions, and the overt or covert questioning of the rules of legal culture. Depending on the characteristics of a given country's political system, the sequence of bodies appointment of which enables the corruption of the legal order may vary (1). Open questioning of the rules of legal culture takes place as a result of a refusal to apply the law (2). Covert questioning of the rules of legal culture may take place by replacing the rules of interpretation and application of the law with rules selected to ensure the achievement of political goals. This method of deconstructing the legal order, even by lawyers, can only be considered a difference in legal assessment in a specific case (3). Positions vulnerable to corruption require special protection. The subject of this article is an analysis carried out in order to highlight the characteristics of such deconstruction and to present its results in relation to the universal characteristics of a liberal legal order.

ABSTRACT. The paper offers an update to the discussion on Ronald Dworkin’s idea of law-as-protestant-attitude by critically engaged with judicial practices in a time of authoritarian-populism. In Law’s Empire, Dworkin famously identified that his interpretivist account of law encapsulates a protestant character. Accordingly, each participant in legal practice is empowered to interpret the law when determining rights and duties within the political community. As Imer Flores emphasizes, protestantism through balancing backward- and forward-looking provides intelligent fidelity and fraternal commitments of the citizens to the legal and political system. However, legal protestantism has been subjected to two main objections. Firstly, the expansion and decentralization of interpretative authorities would prevent legal reliability and lead to a chaotic and anarchic legal order. Secondly, the openness of the law to constant reinterpretation would cause uncertainty and instability. For Win-chiat Lee, protestantism in the legal field undermines the authoritative nature of law and the principle of stare decisis. Correspondingly, Dobbs, in which the Supreme Court overturned long-standing abortion law precedents, has appeared as an unintended product of the Dworkinian forum of principle. States have deliberately enacted statutes that violate abortion laws in order to repeatedly bring the issue before the courts. Eventually, the Supreme Court held that the abortion adjudications have formed such an improper part in the chain novel that needs to be rewritten.

In this paper, I argue that authoritarian-populist regimes behave in two opposing jurisprudential camps simultaneously. Protestantism requires overturning or invalidating liberal precedents by another court. In Turkey, where a centralized constitutional review mechanism has been established, ordinary courts have systematically avoided implementing rulings by both the Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights on violations of individual rights against state, and instead insisted that their own interpretations are the one right answer. This protestant enterprise has distorted the integrity of the legal system. The US Supreme Court, in turn, developed anti-protestant view that political morality only reveals by the intermediary of executive power. In Trump v. CASA, the Court held that universal injunctions that prohibit enforcement of executive decrees are devoid of any ascertainment of the history and principle. This other side of the coin emerges that the first and foremost source of law is executive decrees rather than general and coherent legislation or adjudication. Overall, the paper promises to examine recent developments in contemporary jurisprudence through case argumentation analysis from two perspectives: inside protestantism and beyond protestantism.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines the relational dimension of judicial independence amid political conflict and institutional transformation in Poland after 2015. We argue that judicial independence is not merely a constitutional guarantee or individual virtue but a relational social construct—a dynamic condition shaped through professional practices, interactions, and social trust. Independence emerges from judges’ everyday negotiations with political power, the media, and civil society, rather than existing solely as a fixed institutional feature.

Drawing on 120 in-depth interviews with judges from the Supreme Court, appellate, and district courts, conducted within the project “Judicial Independence as an Element of the Legal System in the Everyday Practice of Judges in the Republic of Poland,” we explore how judges experience and perform independence in practice. The narratives reveal both structural constraints and acts of resistance, showing how autonomy and professional legitimacy are constructed under political and institutional pressure.

Our theoretical framework combines Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory—which conceptualizes the judiciary as a semi-autonomous field of struggle for interpretive authority—with the concept of institutional capture from regulatory economics. This approach helps explain how democratic backsliding reconfigures the legal field’s boundaries and affects its relations with politics and public opinion. It also highlights symbolic and informal mechanisms—such as reputation, credibility, and moral authority—that sustain or erode independence beyond formal constitutional safeguards.

We further situate judicial independence within Poland’s historical and cultural legacy, understanding it as a deeply rooted constitutional and ethical value. This heritage positions judges as moral and institutional guardians of democracy and legal continuity. The Polish case thus offers comparative insights into how judicial autonomy and public trust evolve in Central and Eastern Europe under conditions of political tension.

In the next phase, we plan to extend this relational analysis to other legal and cultural contexts, including Muslim-majority countries and Israel, where judiciaries operate at the intersection of religious, political, and democratic norms.

We conclude that judicial independence is a multidimensional phenomenon—normative, institutional, and psychosocial—and that defending it in times of democratic erosion requires not only institutional reform but also the reconstruction of symbolic capital and public trust linking judges, citizens, and the state.

ABSTRACT. In the age of artificial intelligence (AI), democracy confronts a profound challenge to its ethical and epistemic foundations. As algorithmic systems reshape how societies determine truth and AI-generated content increasingly saturates public discourse, democracy faces not merely a crisis of misinformation but a fundamental disruption of the conditions that make collective self-governance possible. This after-truth condition demands not a reform of democratic deliberation but a reconstruction of its foundations. The epistemic-ontological fracture that AI introduces does not merely unsettle the ways citizens come to know; it produces a breakdown in what they are prepared to accept as real. Existing AI ethics frameworks have largely focused on bias and transparency, failing to adequately address the deeper destabilization. Such frameworks presuppose epistemic stability as an unquestioned foundation, yet AI systems are effectively eroding that very ground. What these frameworks largely fail to register is that algorithmic logic has moved beyond passively filtering reality and become a force that actively reconstitutes it. The cascade of epistemic inequalities that consequently emerges is one that ultimately undermines the shared ontological ground on which democratic coexistence depends. In this study, an attempt is made to reveal how data silence operates as a mechanism of epistemic exclusion. Data silence arises when computational systems recognize only quantifiable, processable information as valid, while at the same time rendering invisible other ways of knowing, such as experiential, contextual, and embodied understanding. This mechanism produces epistemic inequality by granting legitimacy to data-driven knowledge while marginalizing human judgment. As a deeper problem, however, this mechanism ultimately produces ontological instability as citizens lose their footing on a common foundation of reality. Here, conceptual reconstruction and normative analysis are used together in order to map the interdependence between ontology, epistemology, and ethics in democratic life. The aim is to demonstrate that the crisis facing democracy is not merely technical or institutional but foundational: AI transforms how reality is constituted, how knowledge is validated, and how responsibility is distributed. The task of this reconstructed ethics is to resist algorithmic tendencies that would suspend human judgment in favor of automated certainty. Ultimately, without the value of human interpretation being reasserted, democracy cannot endure in the age of intelligent systems.

ABSTRACT. Automatic translation systems are increasingly framed as tools for inclusion, yet they perpetuate linguistic injustices that disproportionately impact minority language speakers. This paper explores the interface between linguistic rights, translation technologies, and democratic participation through the lens of Galician, a minority language co-official in northwestern Spain. Although Spain’s 1978 Constitution and the 1983 Act on the Standardization of the Galician Language formally guarantee linguistic equality, social and institutional asymmetries persist. Current policies, such as the 2010 Decree on Multilingualism, have unintentionally reinforced Castilian dominance in urban education, exacerbating the intergenerational erosion of Galician use and undermining the egalitarian spirit of democratic multilingualism. Building on Mowbray’s (2022) critique of international linguistic rights frameworks and their assumption of translation neutrality, this paper argues that AI-driven translation models reproduce structural biases embedded in majority language corpora. These models, far from being neutral mediators, entrench existing hierarchies by algorithmically privileging standardized, high-resource languages. The result is a form of digital neocolonialism: culturally dominant languages expand their epistemic reach at the expense of local linguistic knowledge. Galician as a focal case, the paper situates the problem of algorithmic translation within global debates on linguistic justice and cultural survival. It examines how the commodification of translation data and the absence of linguistic impact assessment in AI governance result in the systematic underrepresentation of minority languages. Such processes compromise the democratic ideal of equal participation, as language remains the primary site of epistemic and civic inclusion. In response, this study calls for an ethics of algorithmic translation grounded in cultural sustainability rather than computational efficiency. It proposes reimagining translation not merely as a service but as a democratic right of epistemic participation. Ensuring that AI translation systems serve linguistic diversity—rather than homogenizing it—is imperative for the credibility and inclusivity of democratic institutions in multilingual societies.

ABSTRACT. Democratic legitimacy in law and governance depends on procedures that enable all affected persons to understand, follow, and contest decisions that bind them. Linguistic mediation is central to these procedures, but it takes diverse forms: professional translation and interpreting, community-based mediation, bilingual staff practices, and, increasingly, machine translation and interpreting (MT&I). This paper examines how the institutional embedding of MT&I in legal and administrative workflows reshapes the normative conditions of legitimacy. Building on discourse-theoretic accounts of legitimacy that emphasize accessibility of public reasons and opportunities for contestation (Habermas 1992; Lafont 2019) and on theories of language rights as constitutive of equal civic standing (Patten and Kymlicka 2003), I argue that MT alters relationships among citizens, institutions, and linguistic communities by introducing probabilistic opacity, asymmetric error profiles across languages, and scale effects (Monzó-Nebot 2025). These properties risk converting constitutionally protected participation and defense rights (e.g., ICCPR art. 14(3)(f); EU Directive 2010/64/EU) into language-contingent affordances rather than guarantees. The analysis integrates empirical evidence on systematic bias and instability in MT outputs (Bentivogli et al. 2020; Bender et al. 2021)(Savoldi et al. 2021), with recent scholarship on language justice (Monzó-Nebot 2026, forthcoming) and practice-based frameworks developed in the language justice movement (Antena 2013; Antena Aire 2013, 2014/2020). Together, these literatures show how automated mediation reproduces and amplifies existing hierarchies among languages and speakers. The paper advances two claims. First, it reconstructs a procedural account of legitimacy grounded in accessibility, intelligibility, and contestability for all rights-holders. Second, it analyzes MT as a socio-technical mediator with three features relevant to legitimacy: (a) opacity and non-traceability of outputs; (b) data-driven variability that differentially burdens linguistic minorities; and (c) displacement of responsibility from identifiable agents to distributed infrastructures. These features interact with the scarcity of professional mediation—particularly for minoritized languages—and the persistent reliance on non-professional practices, making it necessary to target institutional systems rather than occupational categories alone. The contribution is twofold. Normatively, the paper maps core requirements of democratic legitimacy—comprehensibility, equality of participation, reason-giving, and contestability—onto technical characteristics of MT systems such as training-data bias, nondeterminism, and limited auditability. Practically, it reassesses the limits of professional translation under language-justice constraints and argues for institutionally embedded linguistic risk governance (Renn 2008) as a framework to preserve democratic legitimacy in multilingual societies.

ABSTRACT. Artificial intelligence (AI) represents a disruptive force reshaping not only economic and technological domains but also the legal and political foundations of democracy. Its ability to process massive data, predict behavior, and generate content offers unprecedented opportunities for progress, while posing systemic threats to liberty, equality, deliberation, and institutional trust. The central challenge is to create constitutional and legal frameworks that guide technological development according to the rule of law and respect for human dignity.

A major democratic risk of AI lies in the manipulation of public opinion. Generative models for text, image, and video enable credible disinformation, eroding the deliberative space essential for self-government. When citizens cannot verify authenticity, public debate risks devolving into algorithmic propaganda. This danger is amplified by the concentration of power in large corporations that control opaque algorithms, establishing a new form of private authority exceeding that of many States.

From a philosophical perspective, AI revives the classic tension between power and law. Hans Kelsen viewed law as a normative order restraining power through procedures, while Carl Schmitt emphasized sovereign decision. Algorithms may become new centers of factual sovereignty, automating political decisions beyond democratic accountability. Technological power, therefore, must remain subject to constitutional control that protects citizens’ autonomy as moral and political agents.

Ethical theory adds further concerns—justice, privacy, autonomy, and responsibility. Following John Rawls’s “veil of ignorance,” algorithms should be designed to prevent structural bias by gender, race, or class. The capabilities approach of Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen underscores that progress is genuine only when it expands real human freedoms; a technology that surveils or excludes contradicts this aim, regardless of efficiency.

Mass surveillance epitomizes AI’s potential for abuse. Facial recognition and predictive systems allow unprecedented monitoring, recalling Bentham’s *Panopticon* as reinterpreted by Foucault—a mechanism of self-censorship born from constant observation. Such pervasive scrutiny undermines freedom of expression and civic participation, incompatible with democratic life.

Constitutional law provides the first safeguard: rights to privacy, equality, expression, and due process must limit AI’s arbitrary use. Positive law must ensure accountability, transparency, and protection from algorithmic discrimination. International cooperation, exemplified by the GDPR and the EU’s proposed AI Act, points toward common global standards.

Ultimately, AI is not neutral. Its democratic impact depends on the norms and ethical visions that shape it. Law and constitutions must constrain and legitimate technological power so that innovation strengthens, rather than erodes, liberty, equality, and human dignity.

ABSTRACT. This research addresses the treatment of the objection of conscience in Law No. 21,030, which regulates the voluntary interruption of pregnancy for three causes in Chile, focusing its critical analysis on the main problems that have been detected in the practical exercise of the objection of conscience at both national and international levels. The dangers arising from the so-called false objection of conscience and the obstruction of services will be analyzed, with the aim of proposing and recommending some concrete measures that seek to restore the lost harmonic balance between true objection of conscience and women's reproductive rights through access to the benefits established in the law. This is with the goal of strengthening the principles of tolerance and freedom of conscience as essential foundations of any democracy.

ABSTRACT. Jennifer Nedelsky is one of the earliest legal philosophers to incorporate the concept of relational autonomy into the analysis of law and social structures. Her work sharply criticizes the tradicional understanding of autonomy as the independence of rights-bearing individuals enclosed within their own boundaries. It shows that autonomy should not be understood in opposition to relationships but rather as constituted through them. However, some scholars have argued that the practical implications of her view remain indeterminate. What exactly does it mean for autonomy to be realized through relationships, and what kinds of institutional and normative consequences does this entail?

The objective of this presentation is to make tow preparations to assess this line of criticism: first, to elucidate Nedelsky's conception of relational autonomy; and second to connect it to law and social institutions.First, I situate Nedelsky’s conception within the broader context of relational autonomy theories developed by Oshana, Christman, and Mackenzie, among others. This will help identify the respects in which Nedelsky’s account may be further refined in light of recent developments in relational autonomy theory. Second, I examine how the clarified conception of relational autonomy in Nedelsky’s framework captures the relationship between individual autonomy, law, and social institutions. While this analysis does not immediately specify concrete policy implications, it aims to shed light on how the indeterminacy of practical implications might be resolved—or why it may remain difficult to do so.

In doing so, the presentation contributes not only to a more precise understanding of Nedelsky’s theory but also to a broader refinement of the conceptual foundations of relational autonomy in legal philosophy.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines how feminist jurisprudence and legal philosophy inform the recognition of foreign sexual harassment tribunal awards across jurisdictions. Drawing upon the 2024–2025 Liu Yalan v. Xiao Lin proceedings before Malaysia’s Tribunal bagi Antigangguan Seksual (TAGS) and the Chengdu Intermediate People’s Court, it explores the normative tensions between judicial sovereignty, public-policy exceptions, and transnational justice for victims of gender-based misconduct. The analysis employs legal pluralism and coercive control theory to argue that “justice” in transnational adjudication transcends territorial jurisdiction and requires substantive equality and acknowledgment of gendered harm. Situating the TAGS decision within China’s developing doctrine of presumed reciprocity under the Civil Procedure Law and the Belt-and-Road judicial cooperation framework, the paper proposes a philosophical model for reconciling sovereignty with universal commitments to dignity and gender justice. It contributes to the IVR 2026 theme Law, Democracy and Relationships by rethinking how feminist legal philosophy reshapes the moral legitimacy of cross-border adjudication.

ABSTRACT. This presentation examines climate protests as a form of civil disobedience and explores their legal justification within the framework of the rule of law and democratic theory. Climate activism has emerged as a critical response to governmental inaction on climate crisis, raising fundamental questions about the relationship between legality, legitimacy, and democracy in contemporary constitutional states. The Korean Constitutional Court's landmark decision (2020헌마389, August 29, 2024) exemplifies this democratic dimension. The Court ruled that the Framework Act on Carbon Neutrality's insufficient reduction targets for 2031-2050 violated future generations' fundamental rights, mandating legislative revision by February 2026. This decision recognizes the state's duty to protect citizens from climate crisis and affirms that climate protests warning against inadequate state policies serve democratic purposes by supplementing the limitations of majority rule and parliamentary democracy. Ultimately, climate activism holds social significance in strengthening democracy itself.

Civil disobedience, while compatible with the rule of law, remains illegal and must be understood within the tension between legal certainty and democratic legitimacy. While Rawls, Dworkin, and Habermas characterize civil disobedience as nonviolent illegality deserving special legal consideration, Dreier proposes justification through fundamental rights infringement models. However, constitutional proportionality review aims not to approve criminal acts but to interpret the scope of fundamental rights and legislative solutions. Therefore, when civil disobedience manifests in criminal forms such as traffic obstruction or property damage, not only constitutional aspects but also criminal law issues must be addressed to determine legal responsibility.

The possibility of negating illegality for climate protests within criminal law systems raises complex dogmatic issues. Key questions include whether civil disobedience acts can directly prevent and remedy imminent dangers, and how the nature of supraindividual legal interests such as atmosphere and environment affects the recognition of justification grounds. Furthermore, critical considerations in structuring punishment for climate harm include the comprehensive offsetting of greenhouse gas emissions and their compensation through negative emissions, limitation of causality through objective attribution theory, and the relationship between administrative law obligations and criminal law. The challenge lies in determining whether acts causing legally significant risks should be punished, particularly when distinguishing everyday private conduct from industrial-scale emissions. An appropriate balance between administrative legal standards and criminal law evaluation is required to provide legal certainty in boundary-setting for climate change punishment.

ABSTRACT. Recent debates in German criminal law have called into question the democratic sensitivity of current sentencing practice. This critique arises from an observable dissonance between public opinion and judicial sentencing practice. Such discrepancies reveal a structural tension between professionalized sentencing standards and popular conceptions of retributive justice, raising the question of whether this divergence is compatible with the principles of a “democratic” criminal law. This paper argues for a conceptualization of sentencing as an expression of “democratic” criminal law that resists both moral authoritarianism and penal populism. The legitimacy of sentencing cannot rest solely on substantive or procedural fairness but must rather be assessed according to the democratic quality of the relationships it establishes between citizens, offenders, and the state. It further argues that such a democratic understanding of criminal law does not imply deference to public opinion or to culturally specific local penal traditions. Criminal law is a law for citizens, who are not only its addressees but also its agents. The notion of “Bürgerstrafrecht” – a citizen-centered criminal law – requires the judiciary to embrace the values and needs of the general public in order to preserve the legal order and reaffirm the validity of the norm. Sentencing, understood as a socially legitimate attribution of punishment, must thereby reflect shared norms and values. In determining punishment, the judge acts both as a citizen – socially embedded and reflecting collective values – and as a state functionary bound by the statutory and procedural framework of the legal order. This understanding can sustain the normative coherence of sentencing as a practice of collective self-governance and avoid eroding the communicative and relational dimensions that sustain criminal law’s democratic legitimacy. However, reproducing norms in law and as law is committed to values of the polity. This abstract, general culture consists of many partial cultures, whose values and norms differ. Additionally, the feasibility of empirically assessing the population’s penal attitudes remains limited, questioning the practical or normative legitimacy of tailoring sentencing to fluctuating popular sentiments. The paper argues that a minimal consensus can only be reached if it is envisaged as a scale between limits that delineate a socially recognized range of acceptable sentencing outcomes and as such a shared horizon of legitimacy within which margins of judicial discretion can operate. This margin of discretion serves as the institutional space in which independence and democratic responsiveness must be reconciled.

ABSTRACT. I argue that we can justify state punishment as a means of restoring the authority of law, and that imprisonment is one of the most effective ways of achieving it. State punishment, especially incarceration, has come under fire. Abolitionists argue that state punishment should be abolished because it fails to achieve public safety and violates the human rights of individuals. In response, consequentialism and retributivism develop various arguments in defense of state punishment. In this presentation, I present a Kantian-Hegelian defense of state punishment, by arguing that it should restore the authority of law, which is damaged by crimes. When committing a crime, criminals claim their unilateral authority and disregard the universal authority of law. The state restores its authority by punishing criminals and denying their unilateral authority. However, some argue that the Kantian-Hegelian defense cannot defend incarceration because imprisoning criminals is not necessary to restore the authority of law. In response, I argue that we can justify incarceration when we carefully consider the idea of law. Rather, I argue that incarceration is one of the most effective ways of restoring the authority of law. I conclude that substantial progress can be made by collaborating between a theory of law and a theory of punishment.