RphZ Rechtsphilosophie

Drawing on the Brazilian concept of anthropophagy, not only as a metaphor but as a cultural technique, this article explores how legal translation operates, driven by constellations of desire and embedded in social, cultural, and historical layers...

“Constituent” power is usually interpreted as an unconstituted and unconstrained force. This understanding leads to a paradox and rests on an inadequate theory of law. The constituent character of this power is better understood as referring to...

This article examines the legal theories of Evgeny Pashukanis and Franz L. Neumann. Pashukanis’s commodity-form thesis foreclosed the possibility of socialist jurisprudence beyond capitalist social relations. In contrast, Neumann, reacting to the...

This special issue revisits the Marxian and Pashukanian critique of the legal form, addressing persistent misconceptions in both legal practice and critical scholarship. Far from being a mere attack on liberal jurisprudence, materialist legal...

This article revisits the contested relationship between private and public law in Pashukanis. It argues that the nature of the private-public law distinction can only be grasped through a dialectical reconstruction. Accordingly, it reinterprets...

The paper offers a re-elaboration of the concept of the legal form as applied to international law. In order to move forward from Evgeny Pashukanis’s and China Miéville’s accounts, it expounds the concept of singularity. As I argue,...

Drawing on a newly discovered transcript of a speech that Evgeny Pashukanis delivered at the 1929 International Conference of Jurists in Berlin, this article critically re-examines Pashukanis’ treatment of crime and punishment during the period of...

Affective moralisation is increasingly being used to serve political goals. Since affectively charged moral judgements have the structure of opinion, changes in the free speech environment brought about by the digital cheap speech era must be...

Evil morality is characterized by features that can be understood as variations of hypocrisy. It appears increasingly in societies in which moral agreements have become fragile and potentials for political transformation are no longer in sight.

This paper tries to analyse in detail the positions Kelsen defended in different works about the role of logic in law. It defends two new theses. (i) Contrary to the majority view, it is argued that there is a continuity of the role logic plays in...

The article reconstructs the dysfunctionality of the moral debate and the discourse on identity politics within the political left. It focuses on the problems of criticism as well as on the behavior of the addressed left audience and, within this...

Within the framework of a critical appraisal of Alexander Somek’s Moral als Bosheit, a kind of intersectional struggle that fulfils the criteria of his concept of social justice is to be outlined with the help of critical theory, which aligns with...

Since his 1920s writings, Kelsen called for a permanent court of compulsory jurisdiction capable of resolving international conflicts. It should also be capable of establishing the individual responsibility of the violators of international law and...

Nomodynamic theories use to describe legal systems as simple systems of legal sources and therefore are usually associated to free and creative character of their activity. It’s paradigmatical example of this Kelsen’s theory, according which all...

Is there such a thing as evil morality? Is it therefore morally reprehensible in itself? And what does such morality mean for society? In his book Moral als Bosheit (2021), Alexander Somek attempts to reconstruct the structure of moral malice. The...

Lon L. Fuller’s The Morality of Law articulates much more than a rejection of legal positivism’s “separation thesis”. The book gives expression to a sustained refusal of positivism’s mission to reduce theoretical comprehension of the...

Among Anglo-American legal philosophers of the 20th Century, Lon Fuller stands apart by his keen interest and firm belief in juridical forms and their relevance for a well-functioning and just legal system. The article contextualizes, analyzes, and...

This study was written in connection with the recently published first German edition of Lon Fuller's book Morality of Law. The author argues that although Fuller’s legal theory is strongly linked to the institutional structure of the common law...

The semantic complexity of human dignity as a legal principle, a moral claim, or a fragile self-relationship corresponds to a plurality of criticisms that have been directed against it. In my contribution, I analyze three forms of critique, namely a...

One of Fuller’s central criteria for the internal morality of law is the existence of rules. This topic marks an important interface between Fuller’s philosophy of law and a fundamental problem of administrative law: the parliamentary proviso....

The peculiarities of the German post-war renaissance of natural law thinking may be part of the explanation that Fuller’s work has not yet received adequate attention within our tradition of legal philosophy. This is regrettable, not least because...