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Luís Roberto Barroso is one of the most influential legal scholars in Latin America. In this Article, we challenge his theory of constitutional legitimacy. Barroso believes that the legitimacy of constitutional adjudication stems from three different roles performed by constitutional courts. First, courts play a counter-majoritarian role; second, they have also a “representative role.” Although judges lack votes, they are better positioned than legislatures to interpret the will of the people because they are less vulnerable to partisan interests. Finally, courts can perform an “enlightened role”; they can break the political inertia and lead society to a better future. Although these powers should be used sparingly, courts can act as an enlightened vanguard and push history forward in the interests of the citizens. We argue that these roles are conceptually inconsistent and that the last two roles are not justified. We conclude, in addition, that Barroso’s theory of judicial legitimacy encourages a politicization of adjudication and constitutes a threat to the rule of law.

Gerald Postema raised a powerful challenge to Ronald Dworkin’s theory of interpretation. By allowing each interpreter to make her own judgment about the content of a social norm, Dworkinian interpretation becomes insufficiently intersubjective and insufficiently political. In previous work, I argued that this criticism must be rejected because Postema’s own account of law, analogical reasoning, and the rule of law requires one to make a reflected judgment and hold other actors accountable to the law. Nevertheless, a powerful objection claims that protestant interpretation is incompatible with the first person-plural reasoning that an intersubjective social practice requires. In response to the objection, I argue that no such incompatibility exists. On closer examination, protestant interpretation is part of the attitude that a rational agent must adopt if she is to acquit her moral responsibilities as a participant in a social practice.

Introducción Esta introducción fornece una visión general del Book Symposium sobre el libro Judging Positivism, de Margaret Martin, con contribuciones de André Coelho, Thomas Bustamante y Jorge Fabra-Zamora, así como una respuesta analítica de Margaret Martin.

¿Puede la tesis del reemplazo de Raz sobrevivir en el contexto de una teoría dworkiniana del derecho y de la adjudicación? Judging Positivism, de Margaret Martin, fornece una de las mejores reconstrucciones y una de las más interesantes críticas ya planteadas contra la influyente filosofía del derecho de Joseph Raz. En uno de los pasos centrales de su argumento, Martin desafía una sumisión central de Raz, que es el intento de combinar la tesis del reemplazo con la tesis de la justificación normal. Mientras la primera exige que ciudadanos y oficiales excluyan de la deliberación cualesquiera razones de primer orden para la acción, la ultima invita consideraciones sobre legitimidad que no se puede examinar con independencia de las razones de primer orden que la tesis del remplazo pretende excluir. En este comentario crítico, yo acepto la crítica de Martin según la cual esas dos tesis no pueden ser aceptadas como argumentos conceptuales. Sin embargo, sugiero que aún existe un espacio para armonizarlas si se las acepta por razones normativas. Si hay un buen argumento para tratar razones jurídicas como un nivel intermedio de razones para la acción, entonces puede haber buenos argumentos circunstanciales para tratar razones institucionales como remplazantes en el sentido que Raz defiende en su teoría del derecho.

Ronald Dworkin’s philosophy of law, in its mature version, is grounded in at least two central claims: first, a thesis about law and morality, which we might call the One-System Thesis; second, a thesis about how moral and legal propositions can be said to be true or false, which we might call the Interpretive Thesis. While the One-System Thesis holds that law and morality form a single system, the Interpretive Thesis makes two distinct claims: first, truth of interpretive propositions—such as moral and legal propositions—must be established from within the practice in which they figure; second, the soundness of an interpretive proposition is related to the purpose of the practice under consideration. Mark Greenberg’s Moral Impact Theory of Law accepts the One-System Thesis while rejecting the Interpretive Thesis. The Moral Impact Theory is a metaphysical theory of how moral facts rationally determine the content of the law. Its main contention is that the actions of legal institutions have an impact on the moral obligations people have in a polity, and the content of the law is made up of the moral obligations that result from the actions of such institutions. Greenberg assumes that moral facts pre-exist and have some metaphysical priority in relation to legal facts. Moral facts must be prior and independent from legal practice in order to play a part in the rational determination of the content of the law. The point of this paper is to offer a response to Greenberg. I argue that the One-System Thesis only should be supported if the Interpretive Thesis is correct, and that without the latter the former becomes an implausible version of natural law jurisprudence.

O artigo que se segue tem como objetivo fazer uma defesa da autonomia universitaria como norma constitutiva da democracia brasileira estabelecida com a Constituicao de 1988. Para tanto, buscar-se-a demonstrar as conexoes entre o sentido da autonomia universitaria, a preservacao da democracia e a garantia do federalismo. O metodo utilizado parte dos recentes ataques as universidades publicas brasileiras, comparando-o ao cenario internacional de ascensao autoritaria. A autonomia financeira aparece como peca essencial: mostraremos que os recentes cortes orcamentarios implicam em violacao a lei e a Constituicao de 1988. Os resultados de pesquisa indicam que restricoes a autonomia universitaria estao conectadas com politicas autoritarias. Conclui-se pela necessidade de um urgente resgate normativo da autonomia universitaria no Brasil. Abstract: the aim of this article is to argue for the claim that university autonomy is a constitutive norm of the Brazilian democracy, authoritatively settled by the Constitution of 1988. For such endeavor, the article demonstrates the connections between the meaning of university autonomy, the preservation of democracy and the guarantee of federalism. The methodology makes reference to the recent attacks on Brazilian public universities, comparing them to the international scenario of authoritarian rise. Financial autonomy appears as a key element: we will show that recent budgetary cuts amount to a breach of law and of the Constitution of 1988. The research results show that restrictions to university autonomy are connected to authoritarian politics. The conclusion is for the necessity of an urgent normative recovery of university autonomy in Brazil.

The negationist approach that the Brazilian government adopted to the pandemic of COVID-19 makes the country an interesting case study of the consequences of politicized and populist responses to coronavirus, which we will summarize in this chapter. Bolsonaro’s underreach politics were based on a permanent strategy to expose the population to the virus in the hope of herd immunity, even after consensus had emerged on the inefficacy of such approach. We reconstruct, in this chapter, the central aspects of this response.

Resumo : Neste artigo, sao examinadas as principais teses de Murphy e Nagel sobre o fundamento politico-moral do direito tributario. Sustenta-se, com os autores, que a distribuicao de rendas realizada pelo mercado nao pode ser tida como intrinsecamente justa, como supunham os teoricos da tradicao liberal. Contrariamente aos autores, porem, entende-se que ha bases de calculo intrinsecamente justas, e que e possivel analisar a justica do direito tributario por meio do principio metodologico da ‘prioridade local’, oferecido por Ronald Dworkin. Aplicando-se esse principio, e possivel analisar a justica de certas bases tributarias independentemente da analise das despesas realizadas pelo Estado para o fornecimento de bens sociais. Palavras-chave : justica tributaria, Base de Calculo, valor intrinseco, Murphy e Nagel. Abstract : In this article we examine the core theses of Murphy and Nagel about the moral and political foundation of tax law. We argue, with these authors, that the distribution of wealth made by the market cannot be considered intrinsically just, as the scholars from the liberal tradition assumed. Against these authors, however, we think that there are tax bases intrinsically just, and that it is possible to asses the justice of a tax system by means of the methodological principle of the “local priority”, suggested by Ronald Dworkin. Once we apply this principle, it is possible to analyze the justice of certain tax bases regardless of the analysis of the expenses made by the state to provide social goods. Keywords : tax justice; Tax Base; intrinsic values; Murphy and Nagel.

This paper replies to the criticisms raised by Eric Scarffe and Thomas Christiano against Dworkin’s philosophy of international law. While the former argues that Dworkin’s philosophy of international law boils down into some form of political realism, the latter upholds that Dworkin’s attempt to ground the legitimacy of international law on the states’ duty to improve their own legitimacy is insufficient to establish a solid foundation for international obligations. In my response to these critics, I hold that they are based on an uncharitable and implausible reading of Dworkin’s theory of international law, since Dworkin’s theses about the law, whether we are considering “municipal” or “international” law, only make sense if they are understood in an interpretive way. This is, I submit, the only way to avoid turning Dworkin’s assumption of the “unity of value” into an implausible metaphysical theory of natural law. Once we adopt Dworkin’s interpretive attitude, it becomes clear that the route taken by Dworkin in “A New Philosophy for International Law” was the only route that remained available for his interpretive account of political legitimacy and the foundations of law.

In this paper, I would like to address some of the criticisms that Waluchow raised against Dworkin that appear in his book Inclusive Legal Positivism, in particular (i) the response to Dworkin’s methodological contention that jurisprudence should be regarded as a first-order interpretation of the law and (ii) the contention that Dworkin’s “law as integrity” provides a deficient description of the practice of precedent, inasmuch as it does not distinguish between theories of law and theories of adjudication and creates a set of puzzles that cannot be resolved with Dworkin’s interpretive account of the legal practice. In response to Waluchow, I argue that regardless of their methodological disagreements, law as integrity and inclusive legal positivism are very similar descriptions of the social practice of law, and that the former can also provide a sound theory of precedent and adjudication.

The interview is part of a book dedicated to the core aspects of Professor Gerald Postema's contribution to jurisprudence. He revises in the interview some of his general views about the nature of law and legal philosophy, as well as the role of history in the assessment of legal concepts and his insightful criticism on analytical jurisprudence. Furthermore, he discusses critically his own contribution to legal theory and his gradual move from a defense of conventionalism to a more historical and integrity-based jurisprudence.

The paper criticizes Hurd’s rejection of role-related perspectivalism about moral duties. Raz’s notion of value incomensurability is used to defy the correspondence thesis according to which the justifiability of an action determines the justifiability of allowing or preventing this action. Against Hurd’s Hohfeldian reconstruction of incommensurable choices as “liberties” that “lack moral value of any sort”, the argument highlights the moral significance of the fact that the choice among incommensurable options is still action for a reason. Incommensurability is explained, then, as a consequence of the social dependence of values on social practices and of the constitutive role of conventions in shaping social relations, personal projects, goals and the responsibilities that define them. It is argued that the severity of the problem of perspectivalism for Hurd is due to her narrow conception morality and that a wider conception that integrates obligations towards others with the requirements of personal integrity is superior. The agent’s goals, relationships and projects take part in moral reasoning since the value incommensurability they make possible is required for value pluralism and personal autonomy. The argument concludes suggesting that a non-positivist, interpretivist conception of legal practice, although acknowledging residual moral combat, would reduce its occurrence and relevance. El documento critica el rechazo de Hurd al perspectivalismo relacionado con los roles sobre los deberes morales. La noción de incomensurabilidad de valores de Raz se utiliza para desafiar la tesis de la correspondencia, según la cual la justificación de una acción determina la justificación de permitir o impedir esta acción. En contra de la reconstrucción hohfeldiana de Hurd de elecciones inconmensurables como “libertades” que “carecen de cualquier tipo de valor moral”, el argumento destaca el significado moral del hecho de que la elección entre opciones inconmensurables sigue siendo acción por una razón. La inconmensurabilidad se explica, pues, como consecuencia de la dependencia social de los valores con respecto a las prácticas sociales y del papel constitutivo de las convenciones en la configuración de las relaciones sociales, los proyectos personales, los objetivos y las responsabilidades que los definen. Se argumenta que la gravedad del problema del perspectivalismo para Hurd se debe a su estrecha concepción de la moral y que es superior una concepción más amplia que integre las obligaciones hacia los demás con los requisitos de la integridad personal. Los objetivos, relaciones y proyectos del agente participan en el razonamiento moral, ya que la inconmensurabilidad de valores que posibilitan es necesaria para el pluralismo de valores y la autonomía personal. El argumento concluye sugiriendo que una concepción no positivista e interpretativista de la práctica jurídica, aunque reconozca el combate moral residual, reduciría su ocurrencia y relevancia.