RphZ Rechtsphilosophie

This paper challenges the idea of the protection of innocence as a shield against violence. The social, political, and legal treatment of children most clearly articulates how violence and the protection of innocence are but two sides of the same...

The concept of violence is central to contemporary debates, marking legitimacy in social and political contexts. Interdisciplinary disagreements concern its empirical, social, political, theoretical, and epistemic dimensions. The editors introduce...

In this article, I argue that every crisis of democracy should be analyzed as a crisis of the regime of fundamental rights that keeps democracies together and sets them radically apart from all other constitutional regimes. First, it will be...

Legal fictions are usually defined as consciously false assumptions. This definition is suitable for distinguishing fictions from presumptions, but it conceals some important nuances about the role of fictions in a legal system. For this reason,...

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is undergoing a process which can be described as “intersectionalization”, in which the CEDAW Committee proliferates a specific interpretation of CEDAW. This...

Foucault has had an enormous impact on social and legal theory. In particular, there is an overwhelming use of Foucauldian concepts in critical theories of rights. This article asks what Foucault’s work and its reception say concerning the...

Generative AI models, notably large language models (LLMs) and text-to-image generators, have gained significant societal attention recently, with increased usage in both private and commercial settings. These models are often trained using data...

The principle of religious and ideological neutrality of the state is used in jurisdiction and legislation as a central constitutional principle to define the limits of religious prac- tice in public office. Particularly in the legal dispute over...

The paper examines the question of how participatory justice can be realized within processes of constitutional change. There are good reasons for understanding constitu- tions as open, unfinished projects. Therefore, no generation that founds a...

We explain the central moral concept of participatory justice and its underlying moral principles. These are manifested in an ideal of inclusion, advocating for equal partici- pation in society, taking into account individuals’ unique...

This text explores the concept of participation rights within constitutional law and jurisprudence, shedding light on terms like “participation rights” and “derivative par- ticipation rights” that are often discussed but not fully...

This paper examines the conceptual confusion of key concepts such as “discrimina- tion”, “disadvantage”, and “inclusion” in philosophy and the social sciences, attributing this to both, the contested nature of these concepts and their...

An approach to analyse the structure of balancing is the idea of defeasible reasoning. This is often explained by using a non-monotonic logic, admitting that new information can invalidate formerly valid inferences. A more fruitful alternative seems...

This paper aims to assess Robert Alexy’s latest contributions to the debate that has followed his fundamental critique of legal positivism in The Argument from Injustice. I discuss several ways to understand the “claim to correctness” Alexy is...

This contribution aims to explain and develop the premises on which Joseph Raz’s version of liberal multiculturalism is based. Towards the end, the conceptual analysis developed by Raz will be applied to some problems of criminal law, especially...

This contribution aims to analyse Samuel Pufendorf’s critique of the Hobbesian con- cept of equality as the equal exercise of natural rights.In the first section of this article, which addresses the basis of equality, Pufendorf applies his...

This paper examines critically the instrumentalist theory of authority as developed by Joseph Raz. According to Raz’s “normal justification thesis” the authority provides its subjects with the tools to act in accordance with reason. In other...

This article attempts to assess the effects of digitization on the law. To this end, it uses a relational approach that is equally suitable for dogmatic as well as theoretical and phil- osophical approaches to law. In this way, not only some digital...