Faculty of Law

Hungary and Czechoslovakia entered in to a treaty on joint investment of construction and operation of a system of locks which came in to force right in 30 June 1978 over the Danube river that flows across boarders of nine countries from Black forest to Black sea in its 2,860 kilo meters course

Can human rights principles admit degrees of contextual variations? Are our cultures condemned to a formally rigid standard of universalist hegemony? This work provides an innovative contribution to the legal-philosophical understanding of human rights theory. While advancing a post-metaphysical reconstruction for the notion of human rights, it defends an original perspective on the relation between universal validity and cultural pluralism. By rejecting the challenges of relativism and classical abstract universalism, this model reinterprets discursive theory in the light of dialectical recognition and judgmental exemplarity. The result is an enriched substantive notion of universalism oriented to the safeguard of situated authenticity. Pluralistic universalism considers that, while formal filtering criteria constitute unavoidable requirements for the production of potentially valid arguments, the exemplarity of judgmental activity, in its turn, provides a pluralistic and retrospective reinterpretation for the fixity of such criteria. While speech formal standards grounds the thinnest possible presuppositions we can make as humans, the discursive exemplarity of judgments defends a notion of validity which is both contextually dependent and "subjectively universal". According to this approach, human rights principles are embedded within our linguistic argumentative practice. It is precisely from the intersubjective and dialogical relation among speakers that we come to reflect upon those same conditions of validity of our arguments. Once translated into national and regional constitutional norms, the discursive validity of exemplar judgments postulates the philosophical necessity for an ideal of legal-constitutional pluralism, challenging all those attempts trying to frustrate both horizontal (state to state) and vertical (supra-national-state-social) on-going debates on human rights.

In this article I present some implications for a concept of transitional justice through the comparison of two approaches: retributive vs. restorative theories. Notwithstanding their profound differences in perspective, both models are grounded upon a strong notion of the public sphere. Accordingly, after showing why neither of the two approaches exhausts the problems of transitional justice, I will demonstrate how a 'complete' justification requires a certain view of public reason based upon rights as truth-constraints of the public sphere.

This paper reconsiders the Hegelian notion of recognition in terms of discursive action, reformulating some of the central Habermasian points at this regard. The post-metaphysical justification of human rights which is here presented, is based upon a two-step argument: illocutive speech acts give place to two sorts of validity claims, on the one hand they raise a claim for universal recognition as right-bearers, whereas on the other hand they raise a claim of universal exemplarity. From this, it follows that valid illocutive speech acts respecting such two constraints do indeed give place to a form of pluralistic universalism. The dialectic process of recognition considers that from an immediate fulfilment of a formal standard of recognition, it follows a negativity moment represented by an exemplar pluralism of contrasting views. The aim of a political community, then, becomes that of producing an all encompassing new exemplar universality in order to obtain a dialectically mediated form of reflective unification.

With this essay I analyse the notion of cultural difference with a reference to moral and epistemic relativism. I then explain how the contradictory nature of relativism leads to the notion of cultural difference and then to the idea of cultural pluralism. Cultural pluralism does not only acquire significance in view of moral arguments but is the result of the fulfillment of sociopolitical standards for mutual cooperation. The latter can be achieved only if the potential conflict among different comprehensive views is defused. According to my views, in order to overcome the potential conflict among comprehensive views of the good, one has to recognize the normative force of one fundamental principle of human rights ─ the principle of equal liberty of communication. The formulation of such a principle is sensitive to the critical-genealogical reconstruction of the primary meaning of human rights as a concept originating from the end of the Wars of Religion (1598). What I will claim is that the principle of equal liberty of communication is required by the same "fact of pluralism" (Rawls 1993). Contrary to its original meaning as equality of conscience, the principle of equal liberty of communication is to be interpreted today in accordance to its most extensive public participatory form, that is, as equality of participation. One crucial aspect of the proposed argument is showing how there is a strict interconnection between the principle of equal liberty of communication and the role of reflective judgment in constructing pluralism along exemplar lines. It is believed that the model of public reason suggested here will prove to be both more inclusive and stable than those grounded on forms of presumed neutrality.

The actual international scenario, while urging for the elaboration of yet more refined international models of justice, it calls also for the understanding of those transitional contexts where no fully fledged democracy or rule of law of international justice can be directly applied before central institutional and legal reforms are conducted. These situations are those which can be defined in terms of non-ideal conditions of justice. Non-ideal conditions of justice, though, should not represent both at the theoretical and at the practical implementing point a defeat from the start for the progressive realization of a just scenario. Rather, non-ideal conditions of justice, should be framed as sub-optimal conditions of ideal justice requiring specific transitory steps and reforms which would eventually lead to fully working democratic systems. Along this essay I will clarify some theoretical and methodological issues that are relevant on how non-ideal contexts of justice should be conceived, and then I will turn my analysis on the analysis of two recent documents dealing with the role that the international community should play in transitional contexts. Finally I will present an electoral model which I take as being at the core of an institutional and legal renewal of transitional democracies, and present a case study which is instructive on the procedural and institutional pitfalls to be avoided when dealing within deeply divided societies.

Recently the idea according to which well-being is to be valued in view of the maximization of self-utility, has been challenged by several economic theories as in particular by Sen's capability approach. This has amounted to the view according to which the -rationality‖ of the rational choice is something much more complex and diverse than what is a mere criterion of self-advantage. With the present essay I try to capture first the limits of rational choice theories in order to point to a more complex view of rationality. I will also discuss the role that psychology plays in such criticism and particularly in the problematization of the notion of -utility.‖