Despairing Justice and the Ethics of Legal Interpretation

This study discusses legal interpretation. The question is how legal texts, for instance laws, statutes and regulations, can and do have meaning. Language makes interpretation difficult as it holds no definite meanings. When the theoretical connection between semantics and legal meaning is loosened and we realise that language cannot be a means of justifying legal decisions, the responsibility inherent in legal interpretation can be seen in full. We are thus compelled to search for ways to analyse this responsibility. The main argument of the book is that the responsibility of legal interpretation contains a responsibility towards the text that is interpreted (and through the mediation of the text also towards the legal system), but not only this. It is not simply a responsibility to read and read well, but it transcends on a broader scale. It includes responsibility for the effects of the interpretation in a particular situation and with regard to the people whose case is decided. Ultimately, it is a responsibility to do justice. These two aspects of responsibility are conceptualised here as the two dimensions of the ethics of legal interpretation: the textual and the situational. The basic conception of language presented here is provided by Ludwig Wittgenstein s later philosophy, but the argument is not committed to only one philosophical tradition. Wittgenstein can be counterpointed in interesting ways by Jacques Derrida s ideas on language and meaning. Derrida s work also functions as a contrast to hermeneutic theories. It is argued that the seed to an answer to the question of meaning lies in the inter-personal and situated activity of interpretation and communication, an idea that can be discerned in different ways in the works of Wittgenstein, Derrida and Hans-Georg Gadamer. This way the question of meaning naturally leads us to think about ethics, which is approached here through the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. His thinking, focusing on topics such as otherness, friendship and hospitality, provides possibilities for answering some of the questions posed in this book. However, at the same time we move inside a normativity where ethics and politics come together in many ways. The responsibility of legal interpretation is connected to the political and this has to be acknowledged lest we forget that law always implies force. But it is argued here that the political can be explored in positive terms as it does not have to mean only power or violence.

Reasonability and the Linguistic - Division of Labor in Institutional Work

We examine institutional work from a discursive perspective and argue that reasonability, the existence of acceptable justifying reasons for beliefs and practices, is a key part of legitimation. Drawing on philosophy of language, we maintain that institutional work takes place in the context of ‘space of reasons’ determined by widely held assumptions about what is reasonable and what is not. We argue that reasonability provides the main contextual constraint of institutional work, its major outcome, and a key trigger for actors to engage in it. We draw on Hilary Putnam’s concept ‘division of linguistic labor’ to highlight the specialized distribution of knowledge and authority in defining valid ways of reasoning. In this view, individuals use institutionalized vocabularies to reason about their choices and understand their context with limited understanding of how and why these structures have become what they are. We highlight the need to understand how professions and other actors establish and maintain the criteria of reasoning in various areas of expertise through discursive institutional work.

Valokuvallistettu luonto : I. K. Inhan tuotanto luonnon merkityksellistäjänä

Photographized nature I. K. Inha s work as a signification of nature The dissertation examines, through the work of the Finnish photographer and writer I. K. Inha (formerly Konrad Into Nyström) (1865 1930), the different ways in which the signification of nature is achieved. The principal material consists of Inha s work from 1890 to 1925, from which a number of photographs and texts are considered and upon which the photographization of nature is contemplated. The dissertation addresses the issue of how nature is conceived and how the act of photographizing it can be defined. The methodical context of the study is composed of three thematic baskets that structure the material and which consist of narrations on Finnish national perception, nature conservation and understanding the world. In the first case nature is seen as the natural environment encompassing lakes, seashores, forests, and hills, which at the time were often perceived from a utilitarian viewpoint. By the photographization they generated a pictorial narrative that could be shared. The natural environment was thus turned into landscape by means of photography, following the global pictorial concepts picturesque and sublime, as well as the national canons that had been developed in literature and the visual arts. In the narrations concerning nature conservation, the photographization did not merely occur within the limits of presuppositions, but rather nature was given the opportunity to unfold itself. While the photograph was being established as a basis for supporting nature conservation or to highlight the destruction of nature at the hand of Man, an attempt was made to represent subjects that were difficult to convey in photographs, such as nature s power or the miracle of growth. The thesis suggests, that in the third case the concept of nature broke away from its strict interconnection with the natural environment and led to a contemplation of nature that is perceivable in a person. In this context the photograph and the photographization are interpreted as an attempt to understand a person and his or her very existence in the world, while this same existential wonder is seen as being embodied in Inha s portrait of a rune singer and in his photographs of forest interior and water. Further, the thesis asks whether photographing nature could be interpreted as an action similar to the idea of the phenomenological reduction as a means of bypassing the photographer s prevailing way of being.