In this editorial Soeharno takes a critical stand on the juridification of ethical principles within banking law. He argues that the legal incorporation of ethical principles, such as ‘integrity’ or ‘prudence’, is counter-productive. Within a legal context, these principles acquire a strictly legal significance and will be deprived of their essentially ethical character.

Although Nussbaum’s “Capabilities Approach” (CA) clearly expresses a commitment to objectivity, this article argues that this commitment is rather ambiguous due to the conception of public reason it endorses. In particular, the CA cannot account for an objective justification of public reason, given certain characteristics of public reason. As a result, the CA jeopardizes the substantive aim it has set itself: to provide an objective justification for public choices regarding human capabilities and their specifications.

Propositions of law are based upon normative judgement. The interpretation and application of legal provisions rest upon a judgement that determines which weight must be attributed to some point of view or perspective. In this respect, legal theory has a normative character. Its normative character does not preclude legal theory from being a scientific discipline. The scientific character of legal theory is not located in the possibility of testing the correctness of its theories. Rather, legal theory owes it scientific character to the shared standards of production and evaluation of legal arguments: the grammar of justice.

This article is a comment on Carel Smith’s paper. Smith rightly argues that the study of law has a hermeneutic character. But his interpretation of legal hermeneutics includes the thesis that in hard cases there is no right or true legal decision. This seems to have negative implications for the scholarly character of the study of law: in hard cases any solution goes. This paper argues, against Smith, that the study of law defends right answers for hard cases. It is also normative in another sense: legal answers, in easy cases as well as in hard cases, always presuppose a normative interpretation of the legal sources. This contributes to the differences of opinion under lawyers. But it is no obstacle to the scholarly character of the study of law, as long as a rational debate about these legal answers and the underlying values and principles is possible. Smith’s rejection of the right answer thesis, however, prevents the possibility of such a rational debate.

This article provides an outsider perspective on the scientificity of legal studies. First, I argue that the presence of controversies does not mean that legal studies lack the status of a genuine science. Astronomy, mathematics, and economics have their controversies, too. Second, I show that non-empirical, non-normative research is no less scientific than empirical research. This is illustrated by work in mathematical logic. Third, I demonstrate the same claim for non-empirical, normative research.Here the example is research on social contract theories by means of gametheoretic models.

This article discusses the right to strike, with special regard to Belgium. Referring to Walter Benjamin, Tindemans argues that strikes are rechtsetzend rather than rechtserhaltend; they constitute a legal order rather than preserve one. Strikes are exceptional phenomena within any legal system, as they do not fit normal criteria of legal validity. According to Tindemans, strikes are to be considered primarily as extralegal phenomena, as means in a political struggle, confronting the “police” of the core institutions of the state and the legal order. Strikes are political actions, moments of collective aspiration towards political equality, and as such threaten the “pureness” of the legal order in favour of a fragmented politics.

Marc de Wilde, book review of Ben Golder & Peter Fitzpatrick, Foucault’s Law. Abingdon/New York: Routledge, 2009

Thom Holterman, book review of Giorgio Agamben, Le règne et la gloire. Homo sacer (II, 2). Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2008

Herman van Gunsteren, book review of Gerard Drosterij, Politics as jurisdiction: a new understanding of public and private in political theory. Muiderberg: Eberson, 2008

Bertjan Wolthuis, book review of Jon Elster, Reason and Rationality, translated by Steven Rendall. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009