Philosophy Of Law Research Articles

Inclusive legal positivism: Basic arguments

The relevance of the topic of this paper is due to the insufficient study of the problems of inclusive legal positivism in the modern philosophy of law. The problem of substantiating the thesis of the inclusion of morality in law on the basis of rational argumentation of scientists and legal practice data considered in the paper allows an innovative analysis of basic legal concepts. The subject of the research is to analyze the methods of moral, ethical and legal argumentation in the works of representatives of inclusive legal positivism. The purpose of the work is to theoretically reconstruct the essence of the debate between inclusive and exclusive legal positivism. The novelty of the topic is due to the lack of studies in the educational and scientific literature on the specifics of the argumentation of inclusive legal positivism, set out in the scientific works of Will Waluchow and Kenneth Himma, the need to rethink traditional ideas about the theory of legal positivism. The research methods used in the paper is the methods characteristic of analytical jurisprudence, including those related to the use of methods of logical and linguistic analysis, as well as special legal methods (formal legal method of interpretation of regulatory prescriptions). The main conclusions of the paper are to reveal the key arguments of the concept of inclusive legal positivism. It is proved that from the point of view of this concept, the law has moral grounds, and judges in some cases use moral reasoning when making court decisions.

Penggunaan Obat Hisap Bagi Penderita Asma Pada Waktu Berpuasa Dalam Kajian Filsafat Hukum Islam

People with asthma really need inhalers to support their health. Contemporary fiqh experts differ in two opinions regarding the law of using this inhaler while fasting, whether it breaks the fast so it is mandatory to replace the fast or not. This research is classified as library research, data was collected by quoting and analyzing sources from books or literature that can support the discussion. This. The aim of this research is to find out the Islamic legal philosophy of using inhalants for asthma sufferers when fasting. So the philosophy of Islamic law regarding the use of inhalation drugs. Ulama who are of the opinion that using inhalation drugs breaks the fast, there are those who do not break the fast, scholars who are of the opinion that breaking the fast and not breaking the fast make ijtihad using the maqasid daruriyah method, they differ in their view of whether the inhalation enters the throat, or not

THE REJECTION OF ROE v WADE BY THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT AFTER FIVE DECADES – A SEISMIC DECISION

The recent dramatic about-turn of the United States Supreme Court (USSC) in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organisation (Dobbs) in May 2022 regarding the rights of women in the United States to an abortion has caused a major uproar. Overruling one of the most famous of all USSC cases, Roe v Wade (410 US 113 (1973) (Roe)), five decades after it was decided, has had major repercussions. To fully comprehend the impact that Roe had on the United States, it is opportune to give an overview of Roe, which was a dramatic judgment and became established law for 50 years. In revisiting Roe, it is difficult to understand why such a clear and well-reasoned majority judgment has been overruled.Roe raised serious legal, moral and religious issues. The central issue was whether a woman had a legal right to an abortion. The USSC by a majority of seven to two held that woman had a constitutionally protected right to an abortion. As will be seen, Roe based its decision on its interpretation specifically of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.All major cases before the USSC can be put into two categories – abortion cases and all others. Abortion remains the central legal issue before that court. It defines the judicial philosophies of the justices of the USSC. It dominates their nomination and confirmation processes. The abortion controversy is sensitive and emotional. It generates vigorous, opposing views. It inspires deep and absolute convictions. A person’s philosophy, experiences, exposure to the raw edges of human existence, religious beliefs, and attitudes towards family values, and the moral standards a person establishes and seeks to observe all influence their thinking about abortion.It arguably delineates the difference between the National Democratic and Republican parties. When, during the confirmation proceedings of the present Chief Justice Roberts, he was asked about his views on Roe, he was careful not to commit himself. His answer was that Roe was settled as a precedent of the court and entitled to be respected under the principles of stare decisis, but he added that the justices of the Supreme Court do sometimes reverse their own precedents.Abortion issues remain eternal. Does a woman have a legal right to an abortion? Is the termination of a pregnancy a decision to be made by a woman and her doctor, or is the protection of potential human life a legitimate interest of the State? At what point does an unborn person acquire legal rights that are protected under the law? The majority and dissenting judgments in Roe represent the full spectrum of legal approaches to these and related questions. However, no court decision exists in a vacuum and the controversial issues raised in Roe continue to be raised and debated in the legal and political life of the United States, as they do in other jurisdictions.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Soviet Political Religion, and Soviet Law

This article discusses the Soviet contribution to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the interplay between the UDHR and Soviet legal system. The paper focuses on legal aspects of the Soviet Union’s lack of interest in the UDHR and argues that, due to the nature of the Soviet political regime, which can be defined as a political religion, Soviet law itself was fully incompatible with any meaningful idea of human rights. In order to demonstrate this incompatibility, the paper explores three aspects of Soviet law: Marxist-Leninist philosophy of law as the ideological premise of Soviet legal system; Soviet understanding of human rights; and Soviet theory of international law. The paper ends with a discussion of the role the UDHR played in Soviet and post-Soviet law.

UNESCO and the Drafting of the UDHR: Navigating Theories and Practices

Immediately after its creation in 1945, UNESCO concerned itself with the idea of a unified framework of rights that would give foundation to the new international order. The enterprise it undertook with a great sense of urgency in 1947 in relation with the drafting of the UDHR by the UN Commission on human rights reflected both the natural law philosophy inherited from the European 18th century, and the 20th century’s imperative call for the realization of the socioeconomic rights of all peoples, across the globe, including those still under political and racial oppression and colonial rule.

Vladimir Solovyov: The Philosophy of the Last Classic. Lecture

The article was prepared on the basis of an open lecture given on April 8, 2022 at the Center Church and International Relations MGIMO of the acting Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University A. P. Kozyrev. The article raises the question of the significance of the legacy of Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov (1853–1900) in Russian philosophy. It is argued that Vladimir Solovyov was a man of the universal, ecumenical type. The author characterizes Solovyov’s philosophy as the completion of European philosophical systematics, noting the syncretic nature of his teaching and the influence of Platonism, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and early Christianity on the thoughts of the Origen of the 19th century, as Solovyov’s contemporaries called him. He also cites the characteristics of Solovyov’s thought given by individual contemporaries and representatives of subsequent Russian philosophy — S. N. Bulgakov, G. V. Florovsky, F. A. Stepun, A. Kozhev and others. In answers to questions at the end of the lecture, a number of essential provisions on works and personality of V. S. Solovyov are clarified. According to the thinker, the fate of Russia depends on the choice of Christianity or opposing oneself to the entire Christian world. For him, there is a distinction between religious Westernism and non-religious Westernism. A.P. Kozyrev subsumes P. Ya. Chaadaev to the type of religious Westerner, since P. Ya. Chaadaev based his ideas of building a Christian kingdom — the city of God on earth, as Augustine wrote on medieval Christianity. Solovyov per se considered himself somewhere in between. A genius cannot be limited to one political ideology, narrow political worldview, a genius does not think in black and white the categories. It makes Solovyov’s idea that there are not only different Wests, but different Easts — China, Japan, and above all the Middle East, Jerusalem — as well. The nature of these and similar constructions allows us to see in Solovyov not only a taxonomist, but a religious philosopher, who argues that a metaphysical lever is necessary to fight evil. It is not for nothing that Solovyov begins Three Conversations with a reflection on whether evil is only a lack of good, a kind of ghost that can easily be eliminated, or whether evil is a real force with its own substance and its essence, and can be defeated not by abstract good, but by the God-man. Therefore, Three Conversations, Including a Short Story of the Anti-Christ is not just a prophecy about the finale of world history, where the Antichrist appears under the guise of a socialist, humanist and philanthropist, he is a politician, president of the United States of Europe, ready to open sacristies to the Orthodox and return the papacy to Catholics, Protestants create an institute for the study of the Bible, you just have to worship him as God. This idea of fake good is destructive for life itself. All that glitters is not gold — this is the maxim of Three Conversations. Good is determined not by the amount of goods that a person produces, but by the name for which they are done, what is put at the forefront. Solovyov, in a certain sense, founded Russian liberalism and the philosophy of law (the human right to a dignified existence, criticism of the death penalty). P. I. Novgorodtsev will call Solovyov the founder of the Moscow school of legal philosophy. Solovyov thinks of law as a way to ensure a minimum of good in society, connects law and morality, basing law on a moral imperative, from which it cannot be decoupled, otherwise the legal norm degenerates, turning into a moral fetish. “The task of law is not at all to turn the world lying in evil into the Kingdom of God, but only to ensure that it does not turn into hell before the time comes,” wrote Solovyov.

The Overlap between the Requirements for Achieving Security and those for the Democratic Practice of Post-conflict States

The study of the relationship between security and democracy is one of the topics that political science has paid attention to, as (security-democracy). It is one of the topics that a number of thinkers, writers, and researchers have devoted themselves to, and it has been reflected in their intellectual and scientific productions in the form of ideas, theories, and research. Political thought and philosophy of law treated freedom and security as two basic components of policies because they express human aspirations. Despite this, the two concepts were treated as contradictory, due to the different value systems of each.
 Post-conflict states face what we might call the dilemma of security and democracy, which revolves around the continuous widening of the scope of contradiction between the ever-changing and ever-increasing requirements for achieving security, and the requirements for achieving democracy with its evolving and renewed content, issues and mechanisms for its new practice, which may result in new sources of threat to national security.
 Hence, the central question that summarizes the research problem revolves around the dimensions of the overlap between the requirements of achieving security and the democratic practice of post-conflict states

Levels of Knowledge of Law: Questions of Methodology

Introduction. One of the main issues of fundamental jurisprudence is the problem of the epistemology of law. Law is a complex social phenomenon in terms of content, forms of manifestation, and ideological guidelines (ideals). The phenomenon of law is understood differently; it is understood as: the order of the sovereign, the means of ensuring security, the means of class compromise, the natural rights and freedoms of citizens, the measure of freedom, the measure of labor and consumption, imperative-attributive emotions, the restriction of the external freedom of a person, the self-limitation of the state, the existence of free will, the divine will erected the will of the economically dominant class, the will of the whole people, the protection / delimitation of interests, universal human value, the minimum of morality, the result of the inaction of morality, etc. into law. Each approach to the definition of law is accompanied by a system of logical arguments and reveals one of the sides of this social and normative regulator. Theoretical Basis. Methods. The purpose of this work is to study the levels of knowledge of law as a socio-cultural phenomenon. To achieve this task, the following tasks are solved: an analysis of law as the most important social regulator of human activity; law is revealed as part of a person’s spiritual life; the main theoretical and methodological levels of knowledge of law are analyzed. The following methods were used in the course of the study: analysis and synthesis, hermeneutic, comparative approach. Results. The author came to the conclusion that in the science of law there are several levels of knowledge of law: 1) the encyclopedia of law involves a summary of the branch of legal sciences; it combines (consolidates) a huge array of factual information and expands the amount of knowledge about law, society, and the state; 2) the theory of law (general theory of law, theory of state and law), as inductive knowledge, extracts the general principles of law from the empirical material accumulated by branch sciences, creating a methodology for studying political and legal phenomena; 3) the philosophy of law deductively builds the doctrine of law, focusing on the desired ideal for the thinker (legal, political, social, personal, ethical, religious, etc.), thereby revealing the value nature of the legal phenomenon. Discussion and Conclusion. Philosophy and theory of law are independent sciences and disciplines. The article shows some differences and common features of the theory and philosophy of law. At the same time, the author emphasizes that all thinkers, both philosophers of law and theorists, build their concepts based on the position that law is a universally binding rule of behavior, and not descriptive maxims of science or political declarations.

Penerapan Restorative Justice dalam Penegakkan Hukum Pidana Anak Berdasarkan Undang-Undang Nomor 11 Tahun 2012

Children with all their definitions and definitions have different characteristics from adults, this is a starting point in viewing the rights and obligations for a child that will also affect his position before the law. In consideration of Law Number 11 of 2012 concerning the Juvenile Criminal Justice System, it is also stated that children are the trust and gift of God Almighty who has dignity and dignity as a whole person. To maintain their dignity and dignity, children are entitled to special protection, especially legal protection in the justice system. The concept and philosophy of criminal law and the juvenile criminal justice system that provides balanced protection of the rights and interests of perpetrators and victims of criminal acts, society and the state, is currently known as restorative justice as a judicial concept that produces restorative justice. Law Number 11 of 2012 concerning the Juvenile Criminal Justice System, hereinafter referred to as the Juvenile Criminal Justice System Law, when viewed from the philosophy underlying the birth of the juvenile justice law is because children have not been able to understand what they are doing and prioritize the best interests of children and in accordance with the 1990 Convention on the Rights of the Child ratified by Indonesia as a member of the United Nations (UN) through Presidential Decree Number 36 of 1990 states that Crime is a last resort because children are assets of the nation and the next generation, based on this law the government makes legal efforts to find the best way for children by issuing a regulation called Supreme Court regulation number 4 of 2014 concerning Guidelines for the implementation of diversion in the juvenile criminal justice system

Philosophy of Law or Philosophy of Reason –The Idea of a Treaty Establishing a Constitution for the European Union

The main purpose of the study is to analyze the feasibility and necessity of an EU Constitution. Briefly, the history of the draft constitution is as follows: The draft treaty aims to codify the two main treaties of the European Union - the Treaty of Rome of 1957 and the Treaty of Maastricht of 1992, as amended by the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) and the Treaty of Nice (2001). The debate on the future of Europe is believed to have begun with a speech by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer in Berlin in 2000. The process began after the Laeken Declaration, when the European Convention was set up, chaired by former French President Valerie Giscard d'Estaing, with the aim of drafting a constitution. The draft contract was published in July 2003. After lengthy discussions and debates over the proposal for qualified majority voting, the final text was approved in June 2004 and signed by representatives of the Member States on 29 October 2004. The failure of the treaty in France and the Netherlands is a serious blow to the European Union because these two countries are considered to be loyal supporters of the European project. The text of the treaty was subsequently rewritten by the Amato Group, officially the Active Committee on European Democracy (ACED), a group of high-ranking European politicians. During the German presidency of the Union, a new treaty was proposed - the Treaty of Lisbon - to replace the original draft of the Constitution. On 12 June 2008, the Lisbon Treaty was also rejected in a referendum in Ireland. But if we want to look beyond history, we can ask - Why does the EU need a Constitution and how can the Constitution be the roadmap to an advanced future for the EU? The answers to this question can be found by analyzing several directions (these are the main points of the article): historical reflexivity; socio-cultural analysis of the philosophical concepts of well-known political and social philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, John Locke; the modern constellation through the prism of Jürgen Habermas and the decision to make a text as a Constitution which its aim is to reach the starting point of an entire community like the EU. Keywords: constitution, EU, philosophy, law, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Jurgen Habermas

Conceptualising Discourse: The Ancient and Modern Greek Word of συζητώ - συζητέω (συ+ζητώ) in Modern Philosophy Law

This article undertakes to explain the importance of discourse in the modern philosophy of law. It conceptualises discourse as a step to the comprehensive truth of a phenomenon, which does not exist in most forms of modern methods. Therefore, modern philosophy of law must be sought through a vigorous application of the method of discourse in deducing the diversity of truth-seeking in modern legal doctrine and the application of law in contemporary society. In this article, the author endeavours to systemise that discourse is capable of comprehending a single absolute fact in legal doctrine and law, which is necessary to produce the exact procedures in society. Thus, discourse unfolds the relationship between the known and the unknown into a philosophical principle. It is then conceivable that discourse by its deduction creates societal forms and substances for the investigator to understand the true form and nature of law in society. Keywords: discourse, philosophy of law, law, ethics, and integrity

Legal powers, subjections, disabilities, and immunities: Ontological analysis and modeling patterns

The development of dependable information systems in legal contexts requires a precise understanding of the subtleties of the underlying legal phenomena. According to a modern understanding in the philosophy of law, much of these phenomena are relational in nature. In this paper, we employ a theoretically well-grounded legal core ontology (UFO-L) to conduct an ontological analysis focused on fundamental legal relations, namely, the power–subjection and the disability–immunity relations. We show that in certain cases, power–subjection relations are primitive in the sense that by means of institutional acts other legal relations can be generated from them. Examples include relations of rights and duties, permissions and no-rights, liberties, secondary power–subjection, etc. We further show that legal disabilities (and their correlative immunities) are key in constraining the reach of legal powers; together with powers, they form a comprehensive framework for representing the grounds of valid legal acts and to account for the life-cycle of the legal positions that powers create, alter, and possibly extinguish. As a contribution to the practice of conceptual modeling, and leveraging the result of our analysis, we propose conceptual modeling patterns for legal relations, which are then applied to model a real-world case in tax law.

The Autonomy of Administration

Justice Rosalie Abella is closely associated with deference to administrative decision makers. I will argue that her deferential approach was multifaceted, much more sophisticated than might typically be assumed. Abella J’s administrative law jurisprudence is as much about administrative autonomy as it is about judicial deference. On one level, Abella J’s jurisprudence is a jurisprudence of judicial restraint, preaching limited judicial oversight of the administrative process. This reflects the conventional way of thinking about deference in administrative law as a doctrine requiring judicial restraint: it is a shield protecting administrative decision makers from judicial interference. Accordingly, she supported a broad presumption of deference to administrative decision makers and articulated a fairly non-interventionist conception of reasonableness review. But, on a deeper level, Abella J’s jurisprudence is more radical. As I explain, Abella J was not committed simply to a restrained approach to judicial review but, rather, to promoting the autonomy of public administration: she furnished swords to administrative decision makers, allowing them to carve out additional space in which to operate and articulate applied versions of legal norms. Her commitment to administrative autonomy, rather than simply to judicial restraint, prompts reflection about the basis of Abella J’s administrative law philosophy, which must ultimately be grounded in her trust of the administrative process, aligning her with the so-called ‘functionalist’ school of thought associated with progressive thinkers. I then turn to the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent rearticulation of Canadian administrative law in the Vavilov case – a rearticulation with which Abella J expressed firm disagreement. I reflect on why the majority and Abella J diverged in Vavilov and suggest that the key features of Abella J’s jurisprudence – restraint and autonomy – are rooted in a mode of thinking about administrative law that has fallen out of favour.

Natural Law Appeals as Method of American-Catholic Reconciliation: Catholic Legal Thought and the Red Mass in Boston, 1941–1944

Abstract: Amid the Second World War, the Boston College Law School and the Archdiocese of Boston co-sponsored the first Red Mass in New England. Though this liturgy had been celebrated for centuries to invoke divine guidance for legal administrators, the Red Mass tradition emerged in Boston during a particular American Catholic intellectual movement. This movement encouraged Catholic and non-Catholic legal practitioners to predicate their understandings of the American legal tradition on the Natural Law philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and, purportedly, the Founding Fathers. By employing the movement's intellectual resources during Red Mass sermons, Boston's Catholic leaders believed they could demonstrate the philosophical Americanness of U.S. Catholicism. Chiefly responsible for the Red Mass tradition's emergence and sustained influence in Boston was Father William J. Kenealy, S.J., Boston College Law School's dean (1939–1956). The history of the first four Red Masses in Boston suggests that the experience of wartime significantly informed Catholic leaders' postwar conviction that appealing to the Natural Law could offer an effective medium for American-Catholic reconciliation.

Update of the word in the interdisciplinary discourse of the theory and philosophy of law

The problem of insufficient language training of applicants and therefore graduates for higher legal education in Ukraine is being updated. They are not offered to study methodologically significant sciences for jurisprudence, in particular semantics, legal linguistics, hermeneutics. Hence, there are gaps in program learning outcomes, errors in law-making, legal evaluations, and explanations of legal phenomena and processes. Inattention to the primary meaning of the word is caused by a shortcoming of the current Standard of the Bachelor’s level of higher legal education of Ukraine: the absence of the need to know and understand the peculiarities of law-making in the list of program learning outcomes. Its linguistic excellence determines the quality of implementation and application of law.
 Analysis the author’s own teaching experience and of the results of studies of individual aspects of the problem by scientists T.I. Dudash, S.I. Maksymov, A.S. Tokarska and others. revealed the urgent need to normalize the contradictory situation in the legal terminology of Ukraine, where Ukrainian and foreign language terms of different meanings are chaotically combined. In particular, it is necessary to take into account the significant differences in legal naming and legal understanding between the continental European and Anglo-American legal systems, with an orientation towards the first as close to the legal traditions of Ukraine. The experience of preserving special national traditions of legal naming and legal understanding in the legal linguistics of the leading EU states – Germany and France – is important. For quality training of Ukrainian lawyers, it is necessary to improve their professional language culture. In particular, supplement the Standard with a separate learning outcome: «the need to know and understand the peculiarities of law- making». The integrated discipline «Theory and philosophy of law» with parallel teaching of the course «Ancillary legal disciplines» should be introduced into the curricula of the specialty «Law» in the first year. Teaching philosophy of law in the fourth year separate from legal theory is illogical. Compile an encyclopedic dictionary of the Ukrainian legal language, give it legal force in the training and practice of law-making and law-enforcing bodies. Focus on continental European law, preserving the uniqueness of the Ukrainian language of law from excessive foreign language borrowings.

Porównanie myśli Arystotelesa i Konfucjusza w kontekście jurysprudencji cnót

This article aims to study the difference between the ethical projects of Aristotle and Confucius in the context of virtue jurisprudence. In the opening, I demonstrate the current state of virtue jurisprudence, acknowledging both its historical and theoretical foundations. Additionally, an increased interest in East Asian thought in the philosophy of law is underlined as forming the basis for this article. The next two sections consist of a reconstruction of the ethics of Aristotle and Confucius, with a special focus on concepts used in both projects. In the closing parts of this article, an attempt is made to compare both Aristotle’s and Confucius’s ethics in the context of virtue jurisprudence. Finally, the article tries to show how taking a Confucian approach can resolve the issue of the foundation of judicial virtues.

Laudacja z okazji wręczenia kard. Zenonowi Grocholewskiemu Nagrody imienia ks. Idziego Radziszewskiego wygłoszona dnia 27 maja 2013 r.

On 27 May, 2013 took place the ceremony on the occasion of the obtaining award of the Rev. Idzi Radziszewski for Card. Zenon Grocholewski for the achievements in the spirit of the Christian Humanismus, awarded by the Scientific Society of the Catholic University of John Paul II in Lublin. In the laudation, Professor Józef Krukowski presented: a biography of Cardinal Grocholewski, his organizational activity in the Roman Curia, especially as a Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal Sygnatura Apostolica and Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education and the scientific achievements in canon law, philosophy of law and on the role of the universities in the modern world.

Philosophy Of Justice In Post-Modern Labor Law: What And How?

The main objective of this research is to examine the concept of justice in labor law which has developed in the context of the post-modern era as marked by rapid social and technological changes and a more inclusive view of justice. By using normative research, researchers will conduct an in-depth analysis of relevant literature on the philosophy of justice, labor law, and postmodernism as part of primary and secondary legal materials. The data collection process will involve a thorough literature review, analysis of legal texts, and examination of related documents and articles from reliable sources. The differentiation of this study from other studies is its comprehensive analytical approach to understanding justice in labor law and its focus on changes and adaptations that occur in the post-modern era. these findings will explain the concept of justice in the workplace that has adapted to the challenges of the times. In addition, this study aims to identify obstacles and opportunities in building a fair, diverse and efficient employment system for all stakeholders. By paying attention to social dynamics, technology, and postmodern values, researchers hope that labor law can be more responsive and flexible in maintaining a sense of justice and the balance of power between employers and workers.

According to law

Abstract Legal discourse consists largely of legal claims. These are claims that there is a legal obligation, legal right, or other legal incident. What is the meaning of “legal obligation”, “legal right” and so on in legal claims? The standard view among philosophers of law is that “legal” indicates that, according to law, there is a moral obligation, moral right or other moral incident. Here I set out a new objection to the standard view. The objection is that the standard view is unable to account for the use of legal claims in some common forms of logically complex arguments.

Casting Justice Before Swine: Late Mediaeval Pig Trials as Instances of Human Exceptionalism

In recent years, several cases about the legal personhood of nonhuman animals garnered global attention, e.g. the recognition of ‘basic rights’ for the Argentinian great apes Sandra and Cecilia. Legal scholars have embraced the animal turn, blurring the once sovereign boundaries between persons and objects, recognising nonhuman beings as legal subjects. The zoonotic origins of the Covid-19 pandemic stress the urgency of establishing ‘global animal law’ and deconstructing anthropocentrism. To this end, it is vital to also consider the extensive premodern legal history that humans share with other animals. Over 200 so-called animal trials have been documented in premodern Europe. In these proceedings, certain nonhuman animals—particularly domestic pigs—were prosecuted, often resulting in their capital punishment or anathema. This paper takes a history of ideas approach to these historical instances where Western philosophy of law and philosophical anthropology intersect, problematising the notion that such trials constitute wholesome precedents of the kind of legal personhood presently debated in jurisprudence. My counter-hegemonic analysis of the legal prosecution and execution of several pigs in fifteenth-century France demonstrates that late mediaeval notions of criminality transcended the alleged human-nonhuman divide whilst reaffirming and reifying human distinctiveness. I propose that pig trials were local laboratories where Christian communities reflected upon the natural hierarchy of God’s creation. Ensuing the apparent breach of the prescribed boundaries of nature, these communities renegotiated and re-naturalised everyday interspecies sociability by utilising the offending animals to exemplify particular norms about what it means to be human, generally to the animals’ detriment.