Implicit Exceptions Research Articles

Antecedent of Norms and Implicit Exceptions an Analysis Proposal

In this article I analyze the concept of implicit exception and clarify if it allows us to present a structural component of the antecedent or not. For this, I carry out: i) an analysis of the notion of antecedent and its components; and ii) an analysis of the different ways of understanding the implicit exceptions in legal theory. I conclude that with the notion of implicit exception we are presenting types of operations and its results and not a structural component of the antecedent. Firstly, it may be used to present the process and result of better understanding the content of the antecedent of a norm. Secondly, it may be used to present the process and result of creation of the law by judges.

Alcance y derrotabilidad de las reglas jurídicas

En este artículo se analiza el alcance práctico de las reglas (AP) y su relación con las reglas de derrotabilidad (RD). Primero, se afirma que determinar el AP depende tanto de las reglas secundarias del sistema jurídico como del dominio limitado de las autoridades. Segundo, se muestra que las reglas secundarias pueden incluir o excluir las razones justificatorias de las reglas y, en esos contextos en donde esas razones no son excluidas, es posible que ellas generen excepciones implícitas, las cuales no pueden ser identificadas de manera anticipada. Tercero, se concluye que la derrotabilidad de la reglas es una propiedad contingente que depende de dos elementos: a) la presencia de razones justificatorias que no son excluidas de acuerdo con las reglas secundarias y el límite de dominio de las autoridades, y b) que las consecuencias normativas de esas razones no puedan ser identificadas ex-ante.

Textualism and Jurisdiction

Recent legislation has reinvigorated the scholarly debate over the proper relationship between Congress and the federal courts in matters of federal-court jurisdiction. The traditional view of jurisdiction-stripping is that Congress has virtually plenary power to determine the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Others have argued that there are substantial limits on Congress's authority to deprive the federal courts of jurisdiction over certain matters. A similar debate has raged over the obligation of federal courts to exercise jurisdiction that Congress ostensibly has conferred. Since the debate over Congress's role in crafting a jurisdictional regime last flared in full force, textualism has been ascendant as a methodology for interpreting statutes, and has had a profound impact on the way that judges - textualists and non-textualists alike - read statutes. The rise of textualism provides an important opportunity to update the long-standing debate over the proper roles of Congress and the courts in matters of federal-court jurisdiction. Like the debate over congressional control of the federal jurisdictional regime, textualism is largely about the judicial role in a democracy. Textualists argue that their methodology recognizes the properly limited judicial role, and they insist that judges must be faithful agents of the legislature, guided by the plain meaning of statutory text. To the extent that textualism has had a significant impact on judicial decision-making, particularly by the Supreme Court, we might expect to see a move towards strict interpretation of jurisdictional statutes, and a vindication, at least as a descriptive matter, for the strong congressional-control models. After all, if the textualist judge is supposed to act as a faithful agent of Congress, following the plain meaning of statutory text, then when Congress plainly withdraws jurisdiction, faithfully textualist judges can be expected to decline to exercise authority; and if Congress confers jurisdiction without qualification, then we might expect textualist judges to eschew arguments for implicit exceptions to the exercise of jurisdiction. In practice, however, textualism has been applied somewhat unevenly to jurisdictional statutes. Although the Court's textualists have strictly read statutes that purport to divest the federal courts of jurisdiction, they have not been as consistent in applying textualism to statutes that appear, based on their plain language, to confer expansive grants of jurisdiction. Textualism's goal to limit the judicial role in a democratic society is advanced by strict interpretations of statutes purporting to divest the courts of jurisdiction. But when Congress appears to confer broad grants of authority - such as in the general federal-question statute - being a truly faithful agent based on statutory language will result in a more robust judicial role than some textualists might otherwise prefer. The treatment by the Court's textualists of jurisdictional statutes suggests that the textualists' urge to constrain judicial power has sometimes trumped the textualists' demand that courts act as faithful agents of Congress by considering only the plain meaning of statutory language in deciphering Congress's instructions. This has implications both for textualism and for the larger question of the proper relationship between Congress and the courts in crafting a jurisdictional regime. It should force textualists to defend their approach more explicitly as a device for constraining judicial authority, and perhaps less as the optimal means for implementing a theory of faithful agency in statutory interpretation. And it suggests that, at least as a positive matter, the strong congressional-control models of federal jurisdiction have not yet fully prevailed, at least with respect to the question of the courts' authority to decline to exercise jurisdiction that Congress ostensibly has granted.

Variaciones sobre temas de Carlos Alchourrón y Eugenio Bulygin: derrotabilidad, lagunas axiológicas, e interpretación

El trabajo pretende analizar las relaciones entre la derrotabilidad de las normas y las lagunas axiológicas desde la perspectiva de una teoría realista de la interpretación. Algunos ejemplos muestran que los dos conceptos denotan fenómenos que se presentan a lo largo del proceso de interpretación y que dependen de las estrategias interpretativas de los juristas. El análisis de los ejemplos permite desprender algunas conclusiones: entre otras, la siguientes. 1. La derrotabilidad no es una propiedad objetiva de las normas, antecedente a toda interpretación: por el contrario, es una de sus posibles consecuencias, es el resultado de una operación interpretativa (en particular, de una interpretación no literal, sino restrictiva, por medio de la cual se crean excepciones implícitas). 2. Al derrotar una norma se excluyen de su alcance algunos supuestos (que, sin embargo, de acuerdo con una distinta interpretación sí estarían reglados por la norma); si dichos supuestos no resultan reglados por otra norma del sistema, el sistema está lagunoso; entonces, la derrota produce una laguna. 3. Dicha laguna puede ser considerada axiólogica o normativa desde perspectivas interpretativas diferentes. Es decir, no se pueden distinguir las lagunas normativas de las lagunas axiológicas independientemente de la interpretación. Entonces incluso las lagunas normativas son variables dependientes de la interpretación: según una interpretación determinada hay una laguna normativa, mientras que según otra interpretación esta laguna milagrosamente desaparece, no subsiste en tanto laguna normativa, y entonces se convierte en laguna axiológica. 4. La derrotabilidad de las normas y las lagunas axiológicas dependen no de la presencia, en el sistema jurídico, de principios, como suponen algunos autores, sino de las valoraciones de los intérpretes, que a menudo toman la forma de «teorías» jurídicas o tesis dogmáticas: algo construido por los juristas antes e independientemente de la interpretación de uno u otro enunciado normativo específico.

Handling uncertainty and defeasibility in a possibilistic logic setting

Default rules express concise pieces of knowledge having implicit exceptions, which is appropriate for reasoning under incomplete information. Specific rules that explicitly refer to exceptions of more general default rules can then be handled in a non-monotonic setting. However, there is no assessment of the certainty with which the conclusion of a default rule holds when it applies. We propose a formalism in which uncertain default rules can be expressed, but still preserving the distinction between the defeasibility and uncertainty semantics by means of a two steps processing. Possibility theory is used for representing both uncertainty and defeasibility. The approach is illustrated in persistence modeling problems.

Religious Expression and Symbolism in the American Constitutional Tradition: Governmental Neutrality, But Not Indifference

In this article, I describe and analyze three principles of First Amendment doctrine. First, the Establishment Clause generally forbids governmental expression that has the purpose or effect of promoting or endorsing religion. Second, and conversely, private religious expression is broadly defined and is strongly protected by the Free Speech Clause. Third, as an implicit exception to the first principle, the government itself is sometimes permitted to engage in expression that seemingly does promote and endorse religion, but only when the expression is noncoercive, nonsectarian, and embedded within (or at least in harmony with) longstanding historical tradition. Comparing these three principles to the demands of French laicite , I conclude that the United States and France share fundamental common ground on the first principle, but that the second and third principles demonstrate that the American approach is in some respects more protective and tolerant of religious expression in the public domain. I suggest that these variations are not accidental, but rather are the product of historical, philosophical, and cultural differences.

CERCLA Section 113(h) & RCRA Citizen Suits: To Bar or Not to Bar

I. INTRODUCTION In December 1980, Congress enacted the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA or the Act)(1) to cope with the most heavily polluted hazardous waste sites in the country.(2) CERCLA's substantive provisions combat the environmental menace on two fundamental fronts. First, the Act codifies a long-standing common law tort doctrine by holding potentially responsible parties (PRPs)(3) strictly liable for conduct involving hazardous, or, as referred to in tort law, abnormally dangerous, substances.(4) Second, the Act establishes a trust fund--known as the Superfund--which the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) utilizes to finance remedial and efforts(5) at abandoned waste sites selected from the National Priorities List.(6) In short, the Act's underlying mission is to protect the natural environment and save human lives. By the mid-1980's, expedited CERCLA cleanups were rare events. Sites targeted for cleanup were often mired in lawsuits commenced by PRPs challenging their expected financial contribution. As such, litigation and its incumbent costs commonly diverted money away from CERCLA's primary objective. Nearly half of Superfund money is frittered away on litigation, bureaucracy and studies. Only 53 percent of funds are spent actually cleaning up sites....(7) Moreover, the time consumed litigating these lawsuits jeopardized the ultimate success of some cleanups, as halting the spread of improperly handled hazardous materials is often a race against time. In response to this problem, Congress amended CERCLA in 1986 to include provisions that reduce the frequency of such litigation. Among these provisions was CERCLA [sections] ([sections] 113(h) or the Section) which prohibits federal courts from reviewing any to CERCLA cleanups once an EPA-ordered removal or remedial is underway.(8) This Section was consistent with the clean up now, litigate later philosophy advanced by Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle. Unfortunately, courts have inconsistently applied [sections] since its passage. This is largely due to widespread confusion over the question of whether [sections] broadly bars all legal challenges at ongoing CERCLA cleanups or whether the bar is narrowly limited to those challenges filed by PRPs intending to postpone their eventual financial contribution. This debate highlights the underlying tension between competing governmental interests with respect to hazardous waste site cleanups. On the one hand, if courts permit challenges to proceed at ongoing CERCLA sites, cleanup efforts may be unacceptably delayed, having the potential effect of further contaminating those sites and threatening human lives. Time is often the enemy in these circumstances. On the other hand, other environmental or health-based harms may occur while the cleanup process is ongoing. Even worse, EPA ordered response actions may be the cause of such harms. If challenges to enforce all laws are unconditionally barred, then some CERCLA cleanups may be the source of more problems then they seek to resolve. Again, time is the enemy. This paper addresses the issue of whether [sections] unconditionally bars plaintiffs from bringing citizen suit challenges under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)(9) once and remedial efforts, are underway at CERCLA sites. The paper concludes that [sections] broadly bars all legal Challenges that call into question the EPA's selected remedial or action regardless of the plaintiff's identity or the authority used to bring the challenge. However, courts should read an implicit exception into [sections] that permits challenges to proceed, including RCRA citizen suits, when the plaintiff can demonstrate convincingly that a continued EPA cleanup would result in further environmental or health-based harms. …

Legal Reasoning Using Abductive Logic Programming

In this paper, we propose a new legal reasoning system using abductive logic programming (ALP). The system can deal with ambiguities of described facts and exceptions which is not described in relevant articles. In addition, the goal, queried to a legal reasoning system, differs in compliance with whether the user is a plaintiff or defendant. In usual deductive legal reasoning systems, there are two major problems in treating legal arguments. One is that legal facts usually have ambiguities, and the other is that two conflicting conclusions must be derived from one knowledge base, depending on whether a plaintiff of defendant is involved. To overcome these difficulties, abductive logic programming is used in our legal reasoning system, which can deal with implicit exceptions and generate presumptions according to the user’s needs.

DEFEASIBLE DEONTIC REASONING

This paper combines a system of deontic logic with a system for default reasoning to analyze a notorious philosophical problem: Chisholm's Paradox. The basic approach is to write deontic rules with explicit exceptions, but we also consider the extent to which a set of implicit exceptions can be derived from the underlying deontic semantics.