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Amalia Amaya

University of Edinburgh, School of Law, British Academy Global Professor

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Institute for Philosophical Research, Faculty Member

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Amalia Amaya received her Ph.D. from the European University Institute in 2006 and an LL.M and a S.J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2007. She is Research Professor at the Institute of Philosophical Research, UNAM and British Academy Global Professor at the School of Law of the University of Edinburgh. She works primarily in philosophy of law, with a focus on legal epistemology and legal reasoning. Her main research project aims to develop a virtue approach to legal reasoning. She is also engaged in research on exemplarism and law and interested in examining the legal and political ideal of fraternity.
Address: Mexico, Distrito Federal, Mexico

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National University of "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy"

Kwantlen Polytechnic University

University of Cologne

Wageningen University

Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia

Armando Marques-Guedes

UNL - New University of Lisbon

St. John's University

Washington and Lee University

Alessandro Arienzo

Università degli Studi di Napoli "Federico II"

Jorge L Fabra-Zamora

SUNY: University at Buffalo

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Papers by Amalia Amaya

Precedent, Exemplarity, and Imitation

SSRN Electronic Journal

Virtù e ragionamento giuridico

Ars Interpretandi: Journal of Legal Hermeneutics, 2022

This article aims to develop an application of virtue theory to the domain of legal reasoning. It... more This article aims to develop an application of virtue theory to the domain of legal reasoning. It argues that a virtue-based theory of legal reasoning illuminates some key aspects of legal reasoning that are peripheral in the standard, principle-based, theories of legal reasoning. More specifically, it claims that a virtue-centered theory of legal reasoning emphasizes the importance of fitting one's judgment to the particulars of the case, brings to light the emotional and perceptual dimensions of legal argument, and highlights the relevance of description and specification for sound legal reasoning. The paper concludes by suggesting that a virtue perspective on legal reasoning shows that there are important connections between theories of legal ethics and theories of legal reasoning, thereby leading to a significant expansion of the field.

La excepcionalidad de la solidaridad

La década COVID en México: Salud mental, afectividad y resiliencia (UNAM), 2022

La coherencia en la argumentación jurídica

Antonio Cruz Parcero and Imer Flores (eds), Teoría de la argumentación jurídica (Tirant lo Blanch), 2021

adjudicación en el Derecho han ocupado una posición prominente en la teoría del Derecho en las úl... more adjudicación en el Derecho han ocupado una posición prominente en la teoría del Derecho en las últimas décadas. 22 Esto está en sincronía con la emergencia del coherentismo a lo largo de una diversidad de campos del conocimiento. El coherentismo se ha propuesto como una alternativa a la explicación fundacionista de la estructura del conocimiento y de la justificación (BonJour, 1985; Lehrer, 2000). La coherencia es también un tema principal en el nuevo, emergente, campo de la epistemología formal (Olsson, 1997; 1998). En la filosofía de la ciencia, el coherentismo explicativo ha sido defendido como una alternativa principal al hasta ahora predominante enfoque Bayesiano de la teoría de la elección (Thagard, 1989). Las teorías coherentistas de la verdad son mucho más controvertidas que los enfoques coherentistas a la justificación de las creencias científicas y empíricas. Sin embargo, en las últimas décadas, nuevas formas de la teoría de la verdad como coherencia han sido desarrolladas y esta teoría aún sigue siendo una de las principales competidoras de la teoría tradicional de la verdad como correspondencia (Walker, 1989; Alcoff, 2001; Young, 2001). En el campo de lo práctico, más que de lo teórico, la coherencia también juega un papel preponderante. Explicaciones importantes de la deliberación práctica dan a la coherencia un lugar privilegiado (Hurley, 1989; Richardson, 1994; Millgram y Thagard, 1996), mientras que el razonamiento moral es considerado de manera amplia como un razonamiento de tipo coherentista (Rawls, 1999; Goldman, 1988; DePaul, 1993). La coherencia aparece no sólo en enfoques filosóficos al razonamiento y a la racionalidad, sino también en los enfoques psicológicos a estos temas.

New Horizons for the Study of the Legal Mind: Relating Virtue, Emotion and Imagination

for their support of the project and its events.

Diccionario de justicia, 2017

El concepto de fraternidad tiene una fuerte carga emotiva y ha sido usado retóricamente tanto en ... more El concepto de fraternidad tiene una fuerte carga emotiva y ha sido usado retóricamente tanto en la teoría como en la acción política para distintos fines, en ocasiones, radicalmente opuestos. Al servicio tanto del nacionalismo como del humanismo cosmopolita, de visiones tradicionalistas como revolucionarias, bastión del pensamiento político cristiano, comunista y anarquista, central en los movimientos por los derechos civiles y el movimiento obrero, consigna usada en los partidos, los sindicatos, los ejércitos, las fábricas o las minas, el concepto de fraternidad tiene una gran potencia politizadora a la par que resulta extremadamente difícil de asir teóricamente. Un punto de partida del análisis de la fraternidad resulta, no obstante, claro: el concepto de fraternidad es un concepto metafórico que vincula el ámbito de la familia con el ámbito de la política. 1 La fraternidad (en sentido metafórico) proyecta las cualidades de la relación fraternal (en sentido literal) al terreno de la política. Es posible diferenciar tres dimensiones o facetas de la fraternidad como principio, ideal o virtud pública. a) Dimensión comunitaria. La existencia de un vínculo común es un rasgo constitutivo de las relaciones fraternales. Los individuos que se encuentran unidos por una relación fraternal tienen algo en común. Es importante notar que lo que se comparte no es un bien sino un rasgo intrínseco de los agentes. 2 En el caso central de la familia cognaticia, se comparte una ascendencia común. Este el también el caso de la fraternidad en sentido cristiano. Fraternidades diversas surgen dependiendo del rasgo que se considera relevante para determinar la pertenencia a la comunidad de frates y sorites: la ciudadanía (en las versiones nacionalistas), la devoción a una misma causa (en los hermanos de armas o en la lucha política), la común humanidad (en las versiones cosmopolitas), la raza o el género (en los movimientos por los derechos civiles). b) Dimensión afectiva. Los individuos unidos por una relación fraternal manifiestan un conjunto de actitudes afectivas. Lealtad, amor, afecto, confianza, preocupación por el 1 Véase Domenech (2013) para una exploración de fraternidad como metáfora conceptual. 2 Esheté (1981: 28).

Vicios Públicos

Diccionario de Injusticias, 2021

Precedent, Exemplarity, and Imitation

Philosophical Foundations of Precedent, 2022

This chapter examines precedent in law from an exemplarist perspective. First, it develops an acc... more This chapter examines precedent in law from an exemplarist perspective. First, it develops an account of precedent as a specific kind of exemplar. More specifically, it claims that precedents as exemplars have a dual ontology as both typical and unique, embody a public, objectbased, and critical kind of exemplarity, and have emotional, monumental, and aesthetic dimensions. Next, it gives an account of reasoning by precedent as a kind of imitative reasoning. From this analysis emerges a view of precedential reasoning as a collective and historical process that has both unreflective and deliberative components, combines adaptative and formal imitation, is both backward and forward looking, and aims at striking a balance between faithful transmission and transformative innovation. Last, the chapter discusses the role that precedent plays in law's development in the context of larger questions about imitation-driven cultural evolution. This perspective allows us to see precedent following as a central mechanism which secures continuity while enabling change, and unveils some complexities involved in the process whereby precedent contributes to the growth of the law. In short, this chapter shows that exemplarism illuminates important aspects of the nature of precedent, reasoning by precedent, and its role in law's development.

Gardner’s Pluralistic Virtue Jurisprudence

From Morality to Law and Back Again: Liber Amicorum for John Gardner, 2022

John Gardner is not identified with virtue jurisprudence, even though his work provides important... more John Gardner is not identified with virtue jurisprudence, even though his work provides important insights on virtue and law. This chapter will focus on one main tenet of his virtue jurisprudence, namely, the claim that virtues are foils to each other. Gardner's virtues-as-foils view is an original thesis that illuminates important aspects of the nature, structure, and phenomenology of virtue. Nonetheless, it is also problematic. It is in tension with central tenets of virtue theory, i.e., that virtues are constitutive components of the good life and that the virtuous person embodies a valuable normative ideal; it is also questionable from a phenomenological and developmental point of view; and it has troubling implications as an account of institutional virtue. Despite these problems, the virtues-as-foils thesis is of paramount importance for virtue-oriented work in law, in that it paves the way for the development of a pluralistic version of virtue jurisprudence.

Arbitral Reasoning and the Ethics of Character

Virtudes, deliberación colectiva y razonamiento probatorio en el Derecho

El razonamiento probatorio en el proceso judicial Un encuentro entre diferentes tradiciones, 2021

La noción de virtud ha jugado un papel importante en la epistemología contemporánea en los último... more La noción de virtud ha jugado un papel importante en la epistemología contemporánea en los últimos años. 1 Desde una perspectiva basada en virtudes, se han desarrollado diversas aproximaciones a problemas tradicionales en epistemología tales como la definición de justificación y de conocimiento. También se han utilizado las herramientas de la teoría de la virtud para atacar otros problemas que no se han considerado centrales en epistemología tradicional como, por ejemplo, la estructura de la deliberación, la sabiduría, el entendimiento o las dimensiones sociales y políticas del conocimiento, enriqueciéndose así significativamente los temas objeto de estudio de la disciplina. 2 La tesis fundamental de la epistemología de la virtud es que los agentes epistémicos y las comunidades, en vez de las creencias, son el objeto central de evaluación epistémica. Esta tesis implica un cambio importante en la dirección del análisis epistémico: la epistemología de la virtud explica las propiedades normativas de las creencias en términos de las virtudes intelectuales de los agentes, en lugar de hacerlo al revés, como es habitual en las teorías de la justificación y el conocimiento de corte no aretaico.

La virtud de la humildad judicial

Emociones y virtudes en la argumentación jurídica, 2017

Virtude e Direito Natural

Direito Natural Contemporáneo, 2021

Respuesta a los participantes (Vega, Flores and Lara)

Isonomía - Revista de teoría y filosofía del derecho, 2017

Los límites del coherentismo en el derecho: a propósito de la tesis de Amaya Juan Vega gómez E n ... more Los límites del coherentismo en el derecho: a propósito de la tesis de Amaya Juan Vega gómez E n su libro The Tapestry of Reason: An Inquiry into the Nature of Coherence and its Role in Legal Argument, 1 Amalia Amaya argumenta las ventajas de adoptar una postura coherentista en el derecho. Concretamente, su tesis principal es la siguiente: Una creencia acerca de los hechos en disputa o acerca de lo que el derecho requiere se encuentra justificada si y sólo si puede ser el resultado de un razonamiento basado en una coherencia epistémicamente responsable (p. 2).

Ambivalence, Judicial Craftsmanship, and the Evolution of the Law: Variations on a Theme of Benjamin Cardozo

Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, 2022

In The Nature of the Judicial Process, Cardozo identifies the embracement of uncertainty as a mar... more In The Nature of the Judicial Process, Cardozo identifies the embracement of uncertainty as a mark of judicial expertise. Such uncertainty, he claims, provides an occasion for the exercise of creative energy and the judicial development of the law. This paper critically examines and extends, in light of contemporary work on the philosophy and psychology of ambivalence, Cardozo's views about the relevance of uncertainty in judicial decision making and its import for the evolution of the law. First, I will provide an account of the benefits of ambivalence in judicial decision-making, with a special focus on the links that there are between ambivalence and judicial creativity. Second, I will argue that there is a certain tension between Cardozo's views on the important role that ambivalence plays in judicial decision-making and his view of law's evolution as a streamlined, self-correcting, process. Two problems, i.e., the problem of hidden alternatives and the problem of unconceived alternatives, and the ever-present possibility of error, vividly bring to light the extent to which law's progress may be hampered. Third, I will argue that for judges to recognize and resolve ambivalence in ways that positively contribute to the development of the law, there is a need to develop a judicial temperament that is neither skeptic nor dogmatic, vindicate imagination as a critical capacity for excellence in judging, and foster a judicial style (and, more broadly, a legal culture) that, in Cardozo's spirit, frees itself from the quest for certainty.

Virtue and the Normativity of Law

Ancient Philosophy Today, 2022

This paper examines the normativity of law, i.e., law's capacity to guide behavior by generating ... more This paper examines the normativity of law, i.e., law's capacity to guide behavior by generating reasons for action, from the perspective of virtue jurisprudence. It articulates a virtue-based model of law's normativity according to which the law generates first order reasons for action (i.e., loyalty-reasons) that need to be factored in citizens' and legal officials' practical reasoning, which consists, primarily, in the search for the best specification of the values involved in light of an account of the good life and the role that the law plays wherein. The outcome of this piece of practical reasoning is a judgment about what ought to be done, the rightness of which depends, on the proposed model, on whether it is a judgment that a virtuous person would characteristically do in the circumstances. This model, it is argued, has distinctive features that set it apart from some prominent accounts of the normativity of law. It may, however, be disqualified as a plausible alternative account of the normativity of law on the grounds that it fails to provide action-guidance. The last part of the paper responds to this objection in a way that unveils the relevance of the social dimensions of virtue to law's normativity.

The Exceptionality of Solidarity

Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy, 2021

for valuable comments on an earlier draft. 1 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/... more for valuable comments on an earlier draft. 1 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/31/shepparton-couple-donating-up-to-500-free-meals-a-day-amid-covid-outbreak. 2 Kathryn Liban and Prakash Kashwan, 'Solidarity in Times of Crisis', Journal of Human Rights 19 (2020): 542. 3 'Solidarity in a Time of Crisis: The Role of Mutual Aid and the Covid-19 Pandemic ', Yunus Centre Report, February 2021. 4 For a discussion of the so-called 'disintegration thesis', i.e., see H.L.A. Hart, 'Social Solidarity and the Enforcement of Morality', The University of Chicago Law Review 35 (1987). 5 Solidarity has, as Crowe nicely puts it, a 'mercurial' quality. It is an 'unstable phenomenon that oscillates between periods of relative quiescence and of intense expressions during events such as strikes, revolutions and religious ceremonies', as well as-we may add-crises such as the current pandemic. See Graham Crow, 'Social Solidarities', Sociology Compass 4 (2010): 58.

Judicial Virtue as Expertise

Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy , 2022

The Virtues and Limits of (In)Coherence

Journal of Legal Philosophy, 2022

El giro aretaico en el Derecho (The Aretaic Turn in Law)

Cuadernos de Pedagogía, 2021

Precedent, Exemplarity, and Imitation

SSRN Electronic Journal

Virtù e ragionamento giuridico

Ars Interpretandi: Journal of Legal Hermeneutics, 2022

This article aims to develop an application of virtue theory to the domain of legal reasoning. It... more This article aims to develop an application of virtue theory to the domain of legal reasoning. It argues that a virtue-based theory of legal reasoning illuminates some key aspects of legal reasoning that are peripheral in the standard, principle-based, theories of legal reasoning. More specifically, it claims that a virtue-centered theory of legal reasoning emphasizes the importance of fitting one's judgment to the particulars of the case, brings to light the emotional and perceptual dimensions of legal argument, and highlights the relevance of description and specification for sound legal reasoning. The paper concludes by suggesting that a virtue perspective on legal reasoning shows that there are important connections between theories of legal ethics and theories of legal reasoning, thereby leading to a significant expansion of the field.

La excepcionalidad de la solidaridad

La década COVID en México: Salud mental, afectividad y resiliencia (UNAM), 2022

La coherencia en la argumentación jurídica

Antonio Cruz Parcero and Imer Flores (eds), Teoría de la argumentación jurídica (Tirant lo Blanch), 2021

adjudicación en el Derecho han ocupado una posición prominente en la teoría del Derecho en las úl... more adjudicación en el Derecho han ocupado una posición prominente en la teoría del Derecho en las últimas décadas. 22 Esto está en sincronía con la emergencia del coherentismo a lo largo de una diversidad de campos del conocimiento. El coherentismo se ha propuesto como una alternativa a la explicación fundacionista de la estructura del conocimiento y de la justificación (BonJour, 1985; Lehrer, 2000). La coherencia es también un tema principal en el nuevo, emergente, campo de la epistemología formal (Olsson, 1997; 1998). En la filosofía de la ciencia, el coherentismo explicativo ha sido defendido como una alternativa principal al hasta ahora predominante enfoque Bayesiano de la teoría de la elección (Thagard, 1989). Las teorías coherentistas de la verdad son mucho más controvertidas que los enfoques coherentistas a la justificación de las creencias científicas y empíricas. Sin embargo, en las últimas décadas, nuevas formas de la teoría de la verdad como coherencia han sido desarrolladas y esta teoría aún sigue siendo una de las principales competidoras de la teoría tradicional de la verdad como correspondencia (Walker, 1989; Alcoff, 2001; Young, 2001). En el campo de lo práctico, más que de lo teórico, la coherencia también juega un papel preponderante. Explicaciones importantes de la deliberación práctica dan a la coherencia un lugar privilegiado (Hurley, 1989; Richardson, 1994; Millgram y Thagard, 1996), mientras que el razonamiento moral es considerado de manera amplia como un razonamiento de tipo coherentista (Rawls, 1999; Goldman, 1988; DePaul, 1993). La coherencia aparece no sólo en enfoques filosóficos al razonamiento y a la racionalidad, sino también en los enfoques psicológicos a estos temas.

New Horizons for the Study of the Legal Mind: Relating Virtue, Emotion and Imagination

for their support of the project and its events.

Diccionario de justicia, 2017

El concepto de fraternidad tiene una fuerte carga emotiva y ha sido usado retóricamente tanto en ... more El concepto de fraternidad tiene una fuerte carga emotiva y ha sido usado retóricamente tanto en la teoría como en la acción política para distintos fines, en ocasiones, radicalmente opuestos. Al servicio tanto del nacionalismo como del humanismo cosmopolita, de visiones tradicionalistas como revolucionarias, bastión del pensamiento político cristiano, comunista y anarquista, central en los movimientos por los derechos civiles y el movimiento obrero, consigna usada en los partidos, los sindicatos, los ejércitos, las fábricas o las minas, el concepto de fraternidad tiene una gran potencia politizadora a la par que resulta extremadamente difícil de asir teóricamente. Un punto de partida del análisis de la fraternidad resulta, no obstante, claro: el concepto de fraternidad es un concepto metafórico que vincula el ámbito de la familia con el ámbito de la política. 1 La fraternidad (en sentido metafórico) proyecta las cualidades de la relación fraternal (en sentido literal) al terreno de la política. Es posible diferenciar tres dimensiones o facetas de la fraternidad como principio, ideal o virtud pública. a) Dimensión comunitaria. La existencia de un vínculo común es un rasgo constitutivo de las relaciones fraternales. Los individuos que se encuentran unidos por una relación fraternal tienen algo en común. Es importante notar que lo que se comparte no es un bien sino un rasgo intrínseco de los agentes. 2 En el caso central de la familia cognaticia, se comparte una ascendencia común. Este el también el caso de la fraternidad en sentido cristiano. Fraternidades diversas surgen dependiendo del rasgo que se considera relevante para determinar la pertenencia a la comunidad de frates y sorites: la ciudadanía (en las versiones nacionalistas), la devoción a una misma causa (en los hermanos de armas o en la lucha política), la común humanidad (en las versiones cosmopolitas), la raza o el género (en los movimientos por los derechos civiles). b) Dimensión afectiva. Los individuos unidos por una relación fraternal manifiestan un conjunto de actitudes afectivas. Lealtad, amor, afecto, confianza, preocupación por el 1 Véase Domenech (2013) para una exploración de fraternidad como metáfora conceptual. 2 Esheté (1981: 28).

Vicios Públicos

Diccionario de Injusticias, 2021

Precedent, Exemplarity, and Imitation

Philosophical Foundations of Precedent, 2022

This chapter examines precedent in law from an exemplarist perspective. First, it develops an acc... more This chapter examines precedent in law from an exemplarist perspective. First, it develops an account of precedent as a specific kind of exemplar. More specifically, it claims that precedents as exemplars have a dual ontology as both typical and unique, embody a public, objectbased, and critical kind of exemplarity, and have emotional, monumental, and aesthetic dimensions. Next, it gives an account of reasoning by precedent as a kind of imitative reasoning. From this analysis emerges a view of precedential reasoning as a collective and historical process that has both unreflective and deliberative components, combines adaptative and formal imitation, is both backward and forward looking, and aims at striking a balance between faithful transmission and transformative innovation. Last, the chapter discusses the role that precedent plays in law's development in the context of larger questions about imitation-driven cultural evolution. This perspective allows us to see precedent following as a central mechanism which secures continuity while enabling change, and unveils some complexities involved in the process whereby precedent contributes to the growth of the law. In short, this chapter shows that exemplarism illuminates important aspects of the nature of precedent, reasoning by precedent, and its role in law's development.

Gardner’s Pluralistic Virtue Jurisprudence

From Morality to Law and Back Again: Liber Amicorum for John Gardner, 2022

John Gardner is not identified with virtue jurisprudence, even though his work provides important... more John Gardner is not identified with virtue jurisprudence, even though his work provides important insights on virtue and law. This chapter will focus on one main tenet of his virtue jurisprudence, namely, the claim that virtues are foils to each other. Gardner's virtues-as-foils view is an original thesis that illuminates important aspects of the nature, structure, and phenomenology of virtue. Nonetheless, it is also problematic. It is in tension with central tenets of virtue theory, i.e., that virtues are constitutive components of the good life and that the virtuous person embodies a valuable normative ideal; it is also questionable from a phenomenological and developmental point of view; and it has troubling implications as an account of institutional virtue. Despite these problems, the virtues-as-foils thesis is of paramount importance for virtue-oriented work in law, in that it paves the way for the development of a pluralistic version of virtue jurisprudence.

Arbitral Reasoning and the Ethics of Character

Virtudes, deliberación colectiva y razonamiento probatorio en el Derecho

El razonamiento probatorio en el proceso judicial Un encuentro entre diferentes tradiciones, 2021

La noción de virtud ha jugado un papel importante en la epistemología contemporánea en los último... more La noción de virtud ha jugado un papel importante en la epistemología contemporánea en los últimos años. 1 Desde una perspectiva basada en virtudes, se han desarrollado diversas aproximaciones a problemas tradicionales en epistemología tales como la definición de justificación y de conocimiento. También se han utilizado las herramientas de la teoría de la virtud para atacar otros problemas que no se han considerado centrales en epistemología tradicional como, por ejemplo, la estructura de la deliberación, la sabiduría, el entendimiento o las dimensiones sociales y políticas del conocimiento, enriqueciéndose así significativamente los temas objeto de estudio de la disciplina. 2 La tesis fundamental de la epistemología de la virtud es que los agentes epistémicos y las comunidades, en vez de las creencias, son el objeto central de evaluación epistémica. Esta tesis implica un cambio importante en la dirección del análisis epistémico: la epistemología de la virtud explica las propiedades normativas de las creencias en términos de las virtudes intelectuales de los agentes, en lugar de hacerlo al revés, como es habitual en las teorías de la justificación y el conocimiento de corte no aretaico.

La virtud de la humildad judicial

Emociones y virtudes en la argumentación jurídica, 2017

Virtude e Direito Natural

Direito Natural Contemporáneo, 2021

Respuesta a los participantes (Vega, Flores and Lara)

Isonomía - Revista de teoría y filosofía del derecho, 2017

Los límites del coherentismo en el derecho: a propósito de la tesis de Amaya Juan Vega gómez E n ... more Los límites del coherentismo en el derecho: a propósito de la tesis de Amaya Juan Vega gómez E n su libro The Tapestry of Reason: An Inquiry into the Nature of Coherence and its Role in Legal Argument, 1 Amalia Amaya argumenta las ventajas de adoptar una postura coherentista en el derecho. Concretamente, su tesis principal es la siguiente: Una creencia acerca de los hechos en disputa o acerca de lo que el derecho requiere se encuentra justificada si y sólo si puede ser el resultado de un razonamiento basado en una coherencia epistémicamente responsable (p. 2).

Ambivalence, Judicial Craftsmanship, and the Evolution of the Law: Variations on a Theme of Benjamin Cardozo

Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, 2022

In The Nature of the Judicial Process, Cardozo identifies the embracement of uncertainty as a mar... more In The Nature of the Judicial Process, Cardozo identifies the embracement of uncertainty as a mark of judicial expertise. Such uncertainty, he claims, provides an occasion for the exercise of creative energy and the judicial development of the law. This paper critically examines and extends, in light of contemporary work on the philosophy and psychology of ambivalence, Cardozo's views about the relevance of uncertainty in judicial decision making and its import for the evolution of the law. First, I will provide an account of the benefits of ambivalence in judicial decision-making, with a special focus on the links that there are between ambivalence and judicial creativity. Second, I will argue that there is a certain tension between Cardozo's views on the important role that ambivalence plays in judicial decision-making and his view of law's evolution as a streamlined, self-correcting, process. Two problems, i.e., the problem of hidden alternatives and the problem of unconceived alternatives, and the ever-present possibility of error, vividly bring to light the extent to which law's progress may be hampered. Third, I will argue that for judges to recognize and resolve ambivalence in ways that positively contribute to the development of the law, there is a need to develop a judicial temperament that is neither skeptic nor dogmatic, vindicate imagination as a critical capacity for excellence in judging, and foster a judicial style (and, more broadly, a legal culture) that, in Cardozo's spirit, frees itself from the quest for certainty.

Virtue and the Normativity of Law

Ancient Philosophy Today, 2022

This paper examines the normativity of law, i.e., law's capacity to guide behavior by generating ... more This paper examines the normativity of law, i.e., law's capacity to guide behavior by generating reasons for action, from the perspective of virtue jurisprudence. It articulates a virtue-based model of law's normativity according to which the law generates first order reasons for action (i.e., loyalty-reasons) that need to be factored in citizens' and legal officials' practical reasoning, which consists, primarily, in the search for the best specification of the values involved in light of an account of the good life and the role that the law plays wherein. The outcome of this piece of practical reasoning is a judgment about what ought to be done, the rightness of which depends, on the proposed model, on whether it is a judgment that a virtuous person would characteristically do in the circumstances. This model, it is argued, has distinctive features that set it apart from some prominent accounts of the normativity of law. It may, however, be disqualified as a plausible alternative account of the normativity of law on the grounds that it fails to provide action-guidance. The last part of the paper responds to this objection in a way that unveils the relevance of the social dimensions of virtue to law's normativity.

The Exceptionality of Solidarity

Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy, 2021

for valuable comments on an earlier draft. 1 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/... more for valuable comments on an earlier draft. 1 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/31/shepparton-couple-donating-up-to-500-free-meals-a-day-amid-covid-outbreak. 2 Kathryn Liban and Prakash Kashwan, 'Solidarity in Times of Crisis', Journal of Human Rights 19 (2020): 542. 3 'Solidarity in a Time of Crisis: The Role of Mutual Aid and the Covid-19 Pandemic ', Yunus Centre Report, February 2021. 4 For a discussion of the so-called 'disintegration thesis', i.e., see H.L.A. Hart, 'Social Solidarity and the Enforcement of Morality', The University of Chicago Law Review 35 (1987). 5 Solidarity has, as Crowe nicely puts it, a 'mercurial' quality. It is an 'unstable phenomenon that oscillates between periods of relative quiescence and of intense expressions during events such as strikes, revolutions and religious ceremonies', as well as-we may add-crises such as the current pandemic. See Graham Crow, 'Social Solidarities', Sociology Compass 4 (2010): 58.

Judicial Virtue as Expertise

Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy , 2022

The Virtues and Limits of (In)Coherence

Journal of Legal Philosophy, 2022

El giro aretaico en el Derecho (The Aretaic Turn in Law)

Cuadernos de Pedagogía, 2021

Coherence in Legal Evidence

Philosophical Foundations of Evidence Law

This chapter discusses the role of coherence in a theory of evidence and legal proof. Sections ... more This chapter discusses the role of coherence in a theory of evidence and legal proof. Sections 2, 3, and 4 discuss three main approaches to coherence: structural coherence, narrative coherence, and coherence as constraint satisfaction. Sections 4, 5 and 6 address some problems concerning the relation between coherence and inference, coherence and virtue, and coherence and truth in the context of legal fact-finding. In section 7 suggests some avenues for further research on coherence, evidence and legal proof.

Virtue and Objectivity in Legal Reasoning

G. Villa Rosas and J. Fabra (eds.), Objectivity in Law (Edward Elgar), 2022

This paper claims that, contrary to what some critics some claimed, a virtue approach to legal re... more This paper claims that, contrary to what some critics some claimed, a virtue approach to legal reasoning does not inject subjectivity in legal decision-making, however, it puts forward a conception of objectivity that importantly differs from the ‘methodical’ one that is generally assumed in legal scholarship. In contrast to this conception, which situates objectivity in impersonal methods of reasoning, virtue jurisprudence advances a ‘dialectical’ conception of objectivity, in which subjective features of decision-makers are partly constitutive of the objectivity of legal judgments. More specifically, the virtuous legal decision-maker provides, in this view, an objective standard for evaluating legal judgment. It may be argued that this standard fails to be objective as it may validate incompatible decisions in cases of disagreement and ambivalence. The paper examines this objection and argues that the possibility of normative conflict among and within virtuous legal decision-makers does not succeed in showing that virtue theory is committed to relativism, but it suggests the plausibility of developing a pluralistic virtue jurisprudence.

Exemplarism, virtue and ethical leadership in international organizations

Ethical Leadership in International Organizations, G. Vasconcelos and M. Varaki (eds.), Cambridge University Press (forthcoming 2020).

This chapter develops an exemplarist virtue approach to the study of ethical leadership in intern... more This chapter develops an exemplarist virtue approach to the study of ethical leadership in international organizations. First, it puts forward a conceptualization of ethical leadership in international organizations in terms of virtue. Next, it gives an account of the role that exemplary ethical leaders, i.e., leaders that possess and exercise a large share of leadership virtues, play within international organizations. Last, it argues that exemplary leaders enjoy moral authority, which is a contributing factor to legitimacy in global governance institutions. I conclude with some reflections about how an exemplarist virtue approach to ethical leadership in international organizations may be put to work.

Humility in Law

Forthcoming in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Humility, edited by Mark Alfano, Michael P. Lynch and Alessandra Tanesini

Humility has been mostly understood in law as an adjudicative virtue that favours judicial restra... more Humility has been mostly understood in law as an adjudicative virtue that favours judicial restraint. In contrast, this paper argues that the value of humility is hardly restricted to the judiciary -let alone to providing an argument for judicial deference. Rather, humility is an extremely valuable character trait across the legal professions. First, humility has an important impact on the organizational dimensions of the legal professions, in that it generates an egalitarian work environment, stregthens social bonds, is positively related to emotional well-being, enhances performance and innovation, and enables legal organizations to function in highly diverse contexts. Second, humility is critical for excelling in the professional legal practice, for it importantly contributes to both individual and collective legal decision-making. Third, it is also central to legal professional development as it is associated with attitudes that contribute to knowledge acquisition and, specially, with emotional and motivational dispositions that enable learning by example. After showing the relevance of humility to the legal professions, the paper suggests some ways in which it could be fostered through legal education and institutional design. It concludes by offering some reflections about the political implications of giving humiliy an important role in the context of legal professions.

Group-Deliberative Virtues and Legal Epistemology

Forthcoming in Evidential Legal Reasoning, edited by Jordi Ferrer Beltran and Carmen Vazquez, Cambridge University Press.

This paper examines the relevance of group deliberative virtues to the epistemology of legal proo... more This paper examines the relevance of group deliberative virtues to the epistemology of legal proof. In section II, I propose a typology of the main kinds of traits of character that are virtues in the context of group-deliberation about factual issues in law. In section III, I defend the value of these virtues by explicating the ways in which they contribute to sound legal decision-making about the facts being litigated on the part of juries and composite courts. The third section argues that group-deliberative virtues help us correct critical deliberative distortions that threaten to undermine group decision-making on disputed questions of fact. I conclude by exploring some implications of the argument developed in this paper for legal education as well as the design of legal fact-finding institutions.

Virtue, Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory

Cambridge University Press, 2022

Virtue, Law and Justice

Hart Publishing, 2012

This edited volume explores the relevance of virtue theory to law from a variety of perspectives.... more This edited volume explores the relevance of virtue theory to law from a variety of perspectives. The concept of virtue is central in both contemporary ethics and epistemology. In contrast, in law, there has not been a comparable trend toward explaining normativity on the model of virtue theory. In the last few years, however, there has been an increasing interest in virtue theory among legal scholars. ‘Virtue jurisprudence’ has emerged as a serious candidate for a theory of law and adjudication. Advocates of virtue jurisprudence put primary emphasis on aretaic concepts rather than on duties or consequences. Aretaic concepts are, on this view, crucial for explaining law and adjudication. This book is a collection of essays examining the role of virtue in general jurisprudence as well as in specific areas of the law. Part I puts together a number of papers discussing various philosophical aspects of an approach to law and adjudication based on the virtues. Part II discusses the relationship between law, virtue and character development, with some of the essays selected analysing this relationship by combining both eastern perspectives on virtue and character with western approaches. Parts III and IV examine problems of substantive areas of law, more specifically, criminal law and evidence law, from within a virtue-based framework. Last, Part V discusses the relevance of empathy to our understanding of justice and legal morality.

Virtue, Emotion and Imagination in Law and Legal Reasoning

Hart Publishing, 2020

What is the role and value of virtue, emotion and imagination in law and legal reasoning? These n... more What is the role and value of virtue, emotion and imagination in law and legal reasoning? These new essays, by leading scholars of both law and philosophy, offer striking and exploratory answers to this neglected question. The collection takes a holistic approach, inquiring as to the connections and relations between virtue, emotion and imagination. In addition to the principal focus on adjudication, essays in the collection also engage with a variety of different legal, political and moral contexts: eg criminal law sentencing, the Black Lives Matter movement and professional ethics. A number of different areas of the law are addressed (eg criminal law, constitutional law and tort law) and the issues explored include: the benefits and limits of empathy in legal reasoning; the role of attention and perception in judicial reasoning; the identification of judicial virtues (such as compassion and humility) and judicial vices (such as callousness and partiality); the values and dangers of certain imaginative devices (eg personification); and the interactive and social dimensions of virtue, emotion and imagination.

The Faces of Virtue in Law

Routledge, 2019

This edited volume investigates crucial ways in which our understanding of the law can be enhance... more This edited volume investigates crucial ways in which our understanding of the law can be enhanced by employing the explanatory frameworks developed by Virtue Jurisprudence in the past few decades. Crucial in addressing problems with legal experience for which the resources of traditional legal theory are insufficient, this book’s investigation of virtue theory and virtue jurisprudence will be of interest to all of those studying legal decision making and the philosophy of law, as well as those studying virtue ethics more widely. It was originally published as a special issue of Jurisprudence.

The Tapestry of Reason: An Inquiry into the Nature of Coherence and its Role in Legal Argument

In recent years coherence theories of law and adjudication have been extremely influential in leg... more In recent years coherence theories of law and adjudication have been extremely influential in legal scholarship. These theories significantly advance the case for coherentism in law. Nonetheless, there remain a number of problems in the coherence theory in law. This ambitious new work makes the first concerted attempt to develop a coherence-based theory of legal reasoning, and in so doing addresses, or at least mitigates these problems. The book is organized in three parts. The first part provides a critical analysis of the main coherentist approaches to both normative and factual reasoning in law. The second part investigates the coherence theory in a number of fields that are relevant to law: coherence theories of epistemic justification, coherentist approaches to belief revision and theory-choice in science, coherence theories of practical and moral reasoning and coherence-based approaches to discourse interpretation. Taking this interdisciplinary analysis as a starting point, the third part develops a coherence-based model of legal reasoning. While this model builds upon the standard theory of legal reasoning, it also leads to rethinking some of the basic assumptions that characterize this theory, and suggests some lines along which it may be further developed. Thus, ultimately, the book not only improves upon the current state of coherence theory in law, but also contributes to the larger debate about how to articulate a theory of legal reasoning that results in better decision-making.

Emociones y virtudes en la argumentación jurídica

by JOSE RAMON Narvaez and Amalia Amaya

Un nuevo enfoque de la argumentación jurídica