RphZ Rechtsphilosophie

This article presents the internal structure of Islamic law and legal theory. Following the discourses of scholars since the 20th century, concepts of Islamic legal theory are increasingly coming into focus in order to find new ways and methods in...

In recent decades, questions of climate change and environmental problems have received increasing attention not only in Germany and Europe, but also globally. This has been accompanied by transnational and societal debates on environmental ethics....

The terms sharia (šarīʿa) and ‘Islamic law’ are synonymously used both in a general, colloquial sense and in academic literature. The terms do, however, not always coincide. The term sharia refers to the divine origin of rules and norms,...

On the occasion of current discussions about property and the social binding of property (Sozialbindung des Eigentums), especially in the context of housing, this paper addresses the question of how the social binding of property can be...

Debates among Muslim religious scholars in the field of Islamic medical ethics are characterized by a broad spectrum of interpretations. This is not surprising, considering that the religious-legal norms and ethical-moral values are entangled in the...

Engster’s care approach provides an interesting change of perspective to well-established approaches to animal ethics, such as utilitarianism and animal rights accounts: it shifts the focus towards justifying moral status based on...

This paper looks at the debate on animal rights since the so-called “political turn”. It argues that the question whether animals should have political rights can show the potential as well as the limits of the prevailing understanding of...

The vast majority of studies concerning the ecological problems of the 21st century and their consequences for legal philosophy is based in legal ethics or moral philosophy. This article on the contrary takes an ontological perspective on the...

The central contentual characteristic of the legal principle is that it is a value measure directing the definition (creation) of legal rules as to their contents, the understanding of the rules, and the manner of their application. In relation to...

The main reason for human dignity is our capacity for autonomy. By virtue of our gift of reason we can relativize our purposes in the interests of others and set limits for ourselves. This also gives rise to our duty to recognize and respect...

This article serves as an overview on Gottfried Achenwall’s principles of moral imputation specifically in their early development. In contrast to Joachim Georg Darjes, he claims that moral imputation consists in an application of the law. That is...

The article deals with the relationship between law and morality in Joseph Raz's theory of law. The focus is on Raz’s thesis that law necessarily claims legitimate, i.e. moral, authority. The article shows that the justifications given for this...

At first glance, the decisions of the German Federal Constitutional Court on the right to be forgotten, on climate protection and on the prohibition of assisted suicide services would appear to have little in common. On second glance, however,...

Joseph Raz famously argued that law necessarily makes moral claims. The present work evaluates that view, first looking briefly at problems raised by asserting that law ‘claims’ anything, but focusing primarily on the argument that law’s claim...

Legal positivism has been under attack, especially by doctrines contesting its proud claim of a conceptually necessary separation of law and morality. To such an attack the positivist reaction has been that of articulating on the one side a...

The article analyses Raz’s conceptualisation of legal norms as “protected” reasons, which is based on the assertion of their exclusionary force. He takes that conceptualisation to depend on his “service conception” of authority, which...

The paper argues that democracy depends on an essential relationship between political authority and epistemic, or as Raz has called it, theoretical authority. The notable loss of trust in established epistemic authorities, such as science and...

In this paper I compare the understanding of jurisprudence by Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt. By establishing the primacy of politics and rejecting the prescriptive function of jurisprudence, Hans Kelsen enabled a democratic understanding of law (and...

This article presents the legal thought of Hannah Arendt as a post-foundationalist account of constitutional authority. Where authority has traditionally been understood as a hierarchical concept, akin to rule or domination, Arendt democratizes the...

Integration law is intended to overcome inequality. Therefore, inequality first must be named what is done based on categories such as “foreigners” or “people with migration background”. The challenge is that categories should not lead to...

Legal phenomenology is becoming increasingly popular. How must a phenomenological analysis of possession be structured? To explore the nature of possession it has to be considered independently of ownership. In a property system, the understanding...