The Yeoh Tiong Lay Centre for Politics, Philosophy and Law is delighted to host Professor Samuel Rickless for the first workshop in the 2024/25 KJuris programme.

Title

A Theory of Legal Adjudication

Abstract

It is of paramount importance for judges to know how to apply legal texts to concrete legal cases and controversies. Numerous theories of legal adjudication have been offered: intentionalist, strict constructionist, textualist, pragmatist, and ethical (as well as hybrid views that hew very closely to the common practice of judging, which involves looking at text, context, structure, legislative history, authorial intentions, and consequences of implementation). I will argue, on the basis of the function of law, which incorporates rule of law values, that all of these theories get something right even though they are all mistaken. I distinguish, in particular, between constitutions and statutes. Presented with a written constitution with a particular aim or function, the job of a judge is to interpret it as instituting a morally optimal structure of government within the bounds set by the semantic values of its constituent terms, and as appropriately disambiguated by appeal to original semantic intentions when the basis for disambiguation is clear, accessible, and uncontroversial. In the case of statutes, a judge should follow what I call "the Principle of Adjudicative Justice": what matters, primarily and in the first instance, is what it would be just or fair to hold a linguistically competent speaker to, on the basis of the statute's enactment.

Author Bio

Samuel C. Rickless (B. Phil. Oxford, Ph.D. UCLA) is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California San Diego. His areas of research include: early modern European philosophy, normative ethics (particularly the doctrine of doing and allowing and the doctrine of double effect), the philosophy of law (particularly informational privacy and legal interpretation), and the philosophy of language (including a dissertation on the meaning of singular terms). In the areas of ethics and law, he has co-edited two books (The Ethics of War: Essays and The Ethics and Law of Omissions), and authored a number of articles in philosophy journals and law reviews. His current sabbatical project is a book on legal interpretation and adjudication.