Legal Reasoning – Common Law, Civil Law, and Beyond
2nd Edition of the 'Harvard-Hamburg Conferences on New Approaches to Legal Reasoning'
Central to legal systems is reasoning about the law, especially in the process by which judges reach decisions in cases. Judges are institutional actors and legal reasoning occurs in an institutional setting. Is there a special style of reasoning in different legal systems? Do common law judges and their counterparts in civilian systems do something different when they offer reasons for their decisions? What is it about the sources of law and the structure or style in different systems that facilitates or impedes certain kinds of legal reasoning? Do codes and restatements promote the right combination of flexibility and stability in the law? What role do (or should) legal rules play?
Among the contexts in which legal reasoning takes place is the system of law itself. What is the nature of system in law – open or closed, single level or with meta-levels? Does a closer look at legal reasoning suggest the need for new legal ontologies? Do these considerations bring common law and civil law approaches closer together or further apart?
This conference will bring together scholars from multiple disciplines and legal cultures to address the nature of reasoning across legal systems and the nature of system in the law. Emphasis will be placed on bringing new tools – new logics, new models, new disciplinary perspectives – to bear on the role and style of legal reasoning across jurisdictions.
Hosts:
Prof. Dr. Matthias Armgardt, University of Hamburg
Prof. Dr. Scott Brewer, Harvard Law School
Prof. Dr. Henry E. Smith, Harvard Law School
| Date: | June 17-19, 2024 | |
| Location: | Monday, June 17: | Warburg Haus, Heilwigstraße 116, 20249 Hamburg |
| Tuesday, June 18: | AS-Saal, Edmund-Siemers Allee 1, 20146 Hamburg | |
| Wednesday, June 19: | Warburg Haus, Heilwigstraße 116, 20249 Hamburg | |
| Contact: | Chaofeng Chen | |
Cf. Poster and Flyer with Programme for the Conference: Poster and Flyer
Speakers:
Monday:
- Monday, June 17, 9:00
'Opening Speech'
Prof. Dr. Tilman Repgen
Dean of the Faculty of Law, Universität Hamburg - Monday, June 17, 9:30
'Common v. Civil Law'
Prof. Dr. Holger Spamann
Lawrence R. Grove Professor of Law, Harvard Law School - Monday, June 17, 11:15
'The Power of Economic Transplants – Common Law, Civil Law, and Beyond'
Prof. Dr. Katja Langenbucher
Professor for Civil Law, Commercial and Banking Law, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt a.M. - Monday, June 17, 13:30
'The Reasons Highest Courts Give: England vs. Germany, 1880-1889 vs. 2007-2016'
Prof. Stefan Vogenauer FBA
Professor of Law, Max Plank Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, Frankfurt a.M.
together with Dr. Jasper Kunstreich
Researcher, Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory
Prof. Dr. Markus Lieberknecht
Juniorprofessor for Private and Civil Procedure Law under Digital Transformation, University of Osnabrück
Dr. Heinrich Nemeczek
Lecturer, University of Applied Sciences of Deutsche Bundesbank
and Prof. Dr. Holger Spamann
Lawrence R. Grove Professor of Law, Harvard Law School - Monday, June 17, 15:15
'On the Logic of Precedential Constraint'
Prof. Dr. Henry Prakken
Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Law, Utrecht University
Tuesday:
- Tuesday, June 18, 9:00
'Interpreting the Logics of Common Law and Civil Law Arguments from a Logocratic Point of View: Of Transparency, Surface Structure, and Deep Structure'
Prof. Dr. Scott Brewer
Professor of Law, Harvard Law School - Tuesday, June 18, 10:45
'Subsumption and Ponderation as Basic Operations of Legal Methodology'
Prof. Dr. Carsten Bäcker
Professor for Public Law, Constitutional Theory and Legal Philosophy, Universität Bayreuth - Tuesday, June 18, 13:00
'Analogy in Civil Law and Common Law Contexts'
Prof. Dr. Yi-Chen Lo
Assistant Professor of Law, National Taipei University - Tuesday, June 18, 14:45
'Transfinite Arithmetic as a Tool for Balancing Legal Values'
Prof. Dr. Matthias Armgardt
Nucleus Professor for Global Legal History and Private Law, Universität Hamburg
Wednesday:
- Wednesday, June 19, 9:00
'Systems of Legal Concepts: Maintenance, Modulation, Modification'
Prof. Dr. Henry E. Smith
Fessenden Professor of Law, Harvard Law School - Wednesday, June 19, 10:45
'How to Do Legal Interpretation with Comparative Law – A Methodological Reflection and Reconstruction'
Prof. Dr. Yun-chien Chang
Jack G. Clarke Professor in East Asian Law, Cornell Law School
together with Kuan-ting Chen
Doctoral Student, National Chengchi University College of Law - Wednesday, June 19, 13:00
'Modelling Causality through Argumentation'
Prof. Dr. Giovanni Sartor
Professor for Legal Informatics and Legal Theory, University of Bologna, European University Institute
The conference is chaired by:
Monday 9.30: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Wurmnest, Universität Hamburg
Monday 11:15: Prof. Dr. Scott Brewer, Harvard Law School
Monday 13:30: Prof. Dr. Saskia Lettmaier, University of Kiel
Monday 15:15: Prof. Dr. Henry E. Smith, Harvard Law School
Tuesday 9:00: Prof. Dr. Georg Ringe, Universität Hamburg
Tuesday 10:45: Prof. Dr. Markus Kotzur, Universität Hamburg
Tuesday 13:00: Prof. Dr. Claudia Schubert, Universität Hamburg
Tuesday 14:45: Prof. Dr. Ralf Michaels, Max Planck Institute for Comparative and Private Law
Wednesday 9:00: Prof. Dr. Lionel Smith, University of Cambridge
Wednesday 10:45: Prof. Dr. Lionel Smith, University of Cambridge
Wednesday 13:00: Prof. Dr. Scott Brewer, Harvard Law School