Les fondements du droit Prof. René Provost

Mon numéro de groupe : 7

09/10/2013

Semaine d’introduction

Qu’est-ce qui distingue un argument juridique d’un autre fondé sur la morale ou l’éthique? 

Le style juridique est-il vraiment distinct du style littéraire, politique, éthique?

o Utilisation du précédent et des lois, ce qui n’a aucune valeur hors le monde juridique

o Tous prennent en compte le « bien public »

Les sources du droit appartiennent-elles à un registre entièrement à part?

o Registre personnel tout de même pris en compte dans le style juridique

Un argument qui est persuasif du point de vue non-juridique aura-t-il la même qualité dans le cadre d’un

argument juridique?

o Ça dépend

Re: Wishart Estate

Facts:

o Wishart directed in his will that his four horses be executed after his death.

o This was met with strong public protest.

o Executors of will brought application to court to receive its opinion, advice and direction as to

this particular part of the will.

Issue: Should the 4 horses be killed?

Decision: No

Reasoning:

o Wishart treated his horses as pets and wished the best for them

o ∆ true intention was well-being of horses to be preserved and worry they would not be well

taken care of after his death

o Anyway, cannot perform intention of testator where it is contrary to public policy

Brod: Post-scriptum de la première edition du process

Nihilisme de Kafka par rapport à son travail, malgré le grand bonheur qu’il pouvait en tirer

Pas de testament mais dans son beau, un billet écrit à l’encre et plié, adressé à Brod indiquant que Kafka

voulait que tout ce qu’il laisse derrière lui soit brulé après son décès, sans être lu (sauf quelques titres

énumérés qui pourront être gardés sans être réimprimés)

Brod ne le fera pas pour les raisons suivantes :

o Kafka avait déjà, de son vivant, fait cette demande à Brod, qui avait dit qu’il ne respecterait pas

une telle demande (Kafka savait donc le résultat d’une telle demande et aurait du choisi un autre

exécuter testamentaire si ses désirs étaient véritablement irrévocables)

o Kafka lui-même permit la publication posthume de certaines de ces œuvres dans un journal

o Son problème par rapport à ses travaux était en partie de la limitation sur ses œuvres futures à

cause de ses œuvres passées. Ceci n’est plus un problème maintenant qu’il est mort; l’autre partie

du problème était que ses œuvres évoquaient chez Kafka une certaine tristesse, ce qui aussi n’est

plus un problème

o Valeur des œuvres de Kafka

o Le Procès par sa nature devait être inachevé – il était inachevable – donc ceci n’empêchait pas sa

publication

Kafka: Au sujet des lois

Modèle distopique

Lois inconnues de la populace

Appuient le pouvoir de l’aristocratie

o Interprétation nécessite la connaissance des lois

Peu de place à l’interprétation – lois sont vielles, et donc immuable

o Lois comme tradition (et tradition = nombre et immuable pour Kafka)

Noblesse donne le meilleur exemple

Idéal futur : loi appartiendra au public

o PS : Kafka utilise toujours loi avec un L majuscule!

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19/09/2013

Conceptualiser la normativité juridique (en définir les extrêmes)

Katharine T. Bartlett, ‘Only Girls Wear Barrettes: Dress and Appearance Standards, Community Norms,

and Workplace Equality’ (1994)

Feminist critique of dress and appearance

o Impedes women from making own choices and expressing true id

o Subordinate women to men

Demands = more complex

Standards = harder to attain

Objectify women

Construct w as less competent than men

Social inequities codified into dress requirements

o May be just as bad to have to dress as men that to have to dress as women

o Contradiction in feminist position

Goal of liberation agency

Women as victims of social norms outside their control partly negates possibility for

women’s autonomy

Contingency is inevitable but agency is still possible, although it is itself socially

constructed

Rooting out "sexist” workplaces rules and practices based on well-settled community norms is difficult - bc

they are based on social norms, suppressing dress and appearance requirements may not solve the

problems they carry

Will only eliminate one type of constraint without really restoring autonomy of self-prod

of individual

Expectations persist even in absence of mandatory codes

o Advertising

o Patriarchal culture

Available constructed norms don’t leave much room for women’s expressions of self

(and individuals benefit from trying to fit within constructed norms)

Control takes place at hiring stage

Women have more dress options but more possibilities for mistakes and narrower range

of error than men

Clear dress expectations advantage women and unclear dress expectations

disadvantage women

Courts tend to rationalize dress & appearance requirements by ref to community norms

o Reqs may be excused if

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Deemed trivial in their impact on employees

Neutral in affecting men and women alike

Essential to employer’s lawful business objectives

Employer too has appearance interest (to express itself in terms of learned

associations cognitive categorizations of the day)

o e.g. of colors

o Generates awareness of roles encourages professionalism

o Legitimation of functions

o Cues for recognition by customers

o Level out group-based differences

Lon L. Fuller, ‘Human Interaction and the Law’ (1969)

On ne peut pas comprendre le discours juridique en se limitant à ses émanations formelles

o Pont entre société que décrit Kafka et la nôtre

o Normes

Law understood in broadest sense: all legal systems (of states, nations, and those smaller systems that are

law-like in structure and function)

Customary law / Contract law / Enacted law (statutory and common law)

o Customary law

Neglected as primitive

Argues that we cannot understand enacted/official law unless we understand

customary law

i.e. how it comes into being, how it works

Language of interaction

Communicative function of customary law

Providing expectations for social interaction

o Intersecting expectations: considerable convergence in expectations

Code of conduct with both negative and positive prescriptions

Can provide support for enacted law

Grey zones around norms this is where enacted law should live

o Contract law

Comparative to customary law in that it is the parties themselves that bring it into

existence by their agreement and respect

Differences (not clear-cut):

o Interactional expectancies created by words in contracts and actions for

customary law

o Between a limited number of parties (contracts) and extending to larger

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population (custom)

o Enacted law

Also serves to regulate interactions

Not just prescriptive but originates in attempt to facilitate interactions between people as

well as possible between those involved

Exception is w crimes without victims

Also most corrupt and problematic area of enacted law

Maybe bc harder to justify in terms of customary law?

Characterized by its generality and ALSO reciprocity of respect on part of lawgiver and

subject both

o Different types of law are best suited to different social contexts

Comparison between family, amiable strangers and countries at odds with each other

Spectrum from intimacy to hostility

Customary law applies across the board albeit differently

Enacted law and contracts best for amiable strangers

Easier negotiation

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26/09/2013

Droit et littérature

Hay : Property, Authority and the Criminal Law

Droit est un système qui permet de contrôler la société par l’entremise d’un spectacle

En rattachant à l’autre texte : permet d’éviter l’utilisation de la force physique avec les autres marins – créé

un effet de peur parmi eux tel qu’ils éviteront la mutinerie

Justice must not just be done but must be seen as being done

o D’après Hay : la justice n’est que partiellement publique et sa partie publique est un mécanisme

par lequel on transmet l’autorité de la loi

o Aspect rituel de la loi

o Law is chief ideological (power-yielding) instrument of ruling class (comme dans texte de Kafka)

System of criminal law based on terror

Deification of property, value measured in human life (wealth = blood and property)

o e.g. of linen laws – law linked to economy, trade and wealth

o Law enforced the division of property by terror

Mercy also political tool – plays into the spectacle of terror

Unbending opposition of Parliament to repeal capital statutes which were seldom used and weren’t the best

way to protect property – Why?

o Criminal law much more concerned with authority than with property

Criminal law as an ideological system – three aspects of ideology:

o Majesty: theatrics of law, importance of spectacle

Imagery, eloquent speech, power of death, antics surrounding twice-yearly visits of high-

court judges considerable psychic force

Summoning basic ideas of right and wrong (“elaborate ritual of the irrational“ [p. 27])

Three elements

Paternalism (e.g: in addressing jury)

Rhetorical strength: platform to address the multitude

Echo of religion: Echoing some of the psychic components of religion

o God’s command

o Justice

Rule of law

Justice to all – idea of equality (though in fact, false equality)

As number of capital statues increased, interpretation became narrower (cases dismissed

for minor imperfections although prosecution made an excellent case)

Arg was that crim law must be known and determinate to be effective

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When ruling class acquitted men on technicalities, helped instil a belief in

disembodied justice of the law in the minds of all who watched

o Mercy

Mercy and esp King’s pardon epitomized the discretionary element of the law Mercy

used to justify social order

Character witnesses = very important

Pardons were very common

One of the reasons given for mercy was to propitiate popular feelings of justice

Social significance:

Pardon allowed bench to recognize poverty as an excuse although law itself did

not

But in fact:

o Importance given to respectability (class favouritism)

o Chain of power (games of influence)

o Ideology of mercy:

Poor didn’t see elaborate ramifications of interest and

connection (i.e. the corruption of their legal system)

Pardon places principal instrument of legal terror, the gallows, in hands of those in power

Mercy as a tool of strength assertion

Deference: calculated blend of terror and mercy

o Discretion: the decisions that moved the levers of fear and mercy were decisions of propertied

men, and they made them privately, among themselves (opacity)

o Private manipulation of the law by the rich and powerful

If the law was used as an ideology, how do we know that it worked?

o Difference of London

Discretionary use of the law of wealthy and powerful maintained their rule

La pendaison de Billy Budd

SETTING (TIME)  · Summer of 1797, four years into the Napoleonic Wars between England and France and

several months after the Great Mutiny at Nore

SETTING (PLACE)  · On an English warship, the Bellipotent, somewhere on the Mediterranean Sea

MAJOR CONFLICT  · On one level, the conflict of the book is between the natural innocence and goodness of

Billy and the subtlety and deceptiveness of evil, represented by Claggart. The second major conflict of the book is

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the dilemma about whether Vere should absolve Billy for killing Claggart, since Billy is fundamentally

innocent, or whether he should execute him to avoid appearing lenient toward mutiny.

RISING ACTION · Billy’s persecution for minor infractions, his spilling the soup in front of Claggart, and his

encounter with the afterguardsman, who may have been seeking to entrap him, all bring Billy and Claggart toward

open conflict.

CLIMAX · Billy strikes Claggart dead after being falsely accused of mutiny.

FALLING ACTION · Vere forms a special drumhead court to try Billy, and pressures the court to convict and

condemn him; Billy is executed in front of the entire crew; Billy’s legend gradually begins to spread among the

sailors.

THEMES · The individual versus society; conscience versus law; the vulnerability of innocence

Meurtre peine capitale

Articles of War : Un « Acte violent contre un supérieur causant la mort» sera punit par la peine de mort »

Maintien hiérarchie afin de prévenir la mutinerie

Powerlessness of Vere in sentencing

o Law as God’s will

Religiousness of text

Abraham and Isaac (p92)

“Struck dead by an angel of God yet the angel must hand.”

o Budd = essence of good

o Claggart essence of evil

o Good supresses evil (Budd kills Claggart)

o Law above good and evil, somewhat insensitive here to the goodness of

Budd and his action

o p. 93

o Lamb of God p 103

Captain Vere’s affliction as that of the judges Hay describes (p 92)

Drum-head court convened

o Vere’s selection of members for Drum-head court not quite following general custom

o Intention not taken as important – only result of Budd’s blow

o Natural law vs positive law (p 86)

o Discretion/opaqueness Hay talked about : closed-door decision, two-sidedness of Captain Vere

o Rhetorical stregnth of Vere’s speach p 93

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Ce dont on pourrait tenir compte

1) Intention

Dans ce cas c’est presqu’un geste automatique, sans intention de tuer

o Réaction animale p 72

Budd’s testimony : no intention to kill the man, no malicious intent

2) Antécédents

Façon dont commence le roman : élégie du beau marin

Permet de déceler l’état d’esprit du personnage : innocence de l’être au sens de pur

3) Impact de la décision

Prévention? Risque de récidive?

Dissuasion : pour le reste des marins (décourager la mutinerie)

4) Capacité

5) Motifs

Mais quand on applique la loi on ne s’intéresse pas aux motifs

En droit pénal, motifs n’influencent pas détermination de la culpabilité mais pourrait affecter la

sévérité de la peine reçue (p 88)

6) Compassion : accompagne l’application de la loi mais ne vient pas influencer la manière dont la loi est

appliquée

Paternalisme :

Vere rassaurant Budd p 73

Custom : Preparing Claggart’s body, selection of members of Council, tacit rules p94

Actual hanging: a spectacle itself, with the « God bless Captain Vere » and the eeriness of it all

o Superstition of seamen 106

Fear as a vector of power

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03/10/2013

Vers un droit civil québécois

Jean-Louis Gazzaniga, Introduction historique au droit des obligations, Paris, PUF, 1992, aux pp. 35-62

o Évolution lente du droit – pas de ruptures brusques – même si on peut discerner des étapes de l’évolution

o Coexistences de règles de différentes nature/époque/origine

Carte ‘Pays de coutumes et pays de droit écrit au XVIème siècle’

Nouvelle coutume de Paris, Art. 88-95

Code civil du Québec, art. 899-907

Concession de terre en censive, 18 nov. 1655

Alexis de Tocqueville, ‘Un procès à Québec, 1831', in Voyages en Sicile et aux États-Unis (Gallimard,

André Morel, ‘La réaction des Canadiens devant l’administration de la justice de 1764 à 1774 - une forme de

résistance passive’ (1960) 20 R. du B. 53-63

o Canadiens continuent d’utiliser le droit qu’ils avaient à la conquête

Lettre publiée dans La Minerve, 4 avril 1857

Discours prononcé par D. Girouard au ‘convocation’ de l’Université McGill, vers 1860

The Examiner, janvier 1861

Conférence de l’avocat De Bellefeuille, 1864

John E.C. Brierley and Roderick Macdonald, Quebec Civil Law : An Introduction

to Quebec Private Law, Toronto, Emond Montgomery Publications Limited, 1993 aux pp. 6-32

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10/10/2013

Comment les grands courants juridiques coexistent-ils?

Fiddler on the roof

Glenn ch 1-2

1. Théorie de la tradition

a. Interne/externe

i. Tradition comme relationnelle

ii. Theorizing tradition requires living briefly in the middle ground (overcoming separation)

Mise en perspective vs abandon de la perspective

iii. Emmanuel Lévinas : c’est par la contemplation du visage de l’Autre qu’on acquiert sa

propre identité

b. Information

i. Bran-tub comme le processus à travers lequel on choisit l’information

ii. Peut-être métaphore du château de sable mieux appropriée?

Élément de construction et d’effort

Rassemblement de grains de sable mais objectif plus gros en tête dans la façon

particulière de faire le château

Mise en relation – impossible de tracer une frontière exacte entre un château et un

autre (au grain près)

Tradition not just any information but information that reflects and creates norms

Selection/survival of certain information indicate their quality

Link between information and normativity defines the dynamism of traditions

c. Rationalité : approche de Glenn aux traditions

2. Construire les Traditions

a. Début

i. Certains exemples de traditions inventées de toute pièce

ex : le kilt

b. Dissidence

c. ‘Massaging’

i. Qui fait le massage ? Comment ? – ça varie d’une tradition à l’autre

ii. Apprentissage par cœur comme manière d’internaliser la tradition

3. Tradition et temps

a. Pastness : interaction of expectations

b. Évolution

c. Tradition instantanée

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4. Interaction

a. Communauté

b. Parasite / corruption

David : Existe-t-il un droit occidental ?

o David a précédemment exprimé son opinion qu’il existait un droit occidental à deux branches (mais tout de

même assez similaires pour être considérés ensemble comme un droit occidental)

o Beaucoup de critiques – fortes différences

o Glenn might question positionality – depends from which point, and towards which point, you are

looking at

o Continue de croire qu’ils peuvent être réunis jusqu’à un certain point sous l’ombrelle du droit occidental

o Rôle du droit en société

Société idéale est complètement régie par le droit

Rule of law (contrairement à la vision du droit dans les pays communistes)

o Coexistence des deux systèmes dans un même lieu (donne plusieurs exemples de pays) – serait

difficile avec d’autres système de droit

o Mais reconnaît que d’importantes différences subsistent

o À l’origine, différentes compréhensions de « rule of law »

CVL : en droit privé – entre particuliers

CML : en droit public – rapports entre Couronne et les particuliers

Mais rapprochement entre les deux depuis

o Opposition entre les sources de droit

Administration/État prend de plus en plus de place

Plus grand rôle pour l’État dans le droit, afin d’organiser la société

Notion trad de legal rules en CML donc mal adaptée aux conditions nouvelles

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17/10/2013

La Tradition Civiliste

Glenn, ch. 5

A Civil Law Tradition: The Centrality of the Person

I – Constructing a Tradition – no clear line between Chthonic and non-Chthonic

o No “break” from dark-age to sudden rediscovery (so somehow in agreement w Gazzaniga )

Roman law was never dead – it was always there although for a time it had lost a lot of its re-

creative ability and resonance (its ability to convince people)

o Twelve Tables (450 BC) often seen as beginning of roman law/civil law

o Sources and Institutions

o Not rooted in a single revelatory text (traditionally, but then doesn’t the code somehow

take on this role eventually?)

o No sources of law in Chthonic trad

o You could not just create sources of law – would be seen as illegitimate

o Roman law does no grow out of legislation or codification

Law of the people had to grow out of institutions in which people somehow

participated themselves, conferring legitimacy by the participatory character of

the process

Civil law is one of the two major instance in the world of creating institutions to

facilitate the growth of legal tradition through widespread public participation

Cautious initatives – at first, let some of their nobes or patricians decide an

individual case

Later, opening of courts as part of bureaucracy

o Substantive Secular Law

o ∆ Roman law found its origins in advice given by jurisconsults with respect to particular

cases or disputes

o Law that emerged looked much like life

o Multiplication of criteria to organise the world of things and property

o Justinian’s compilation of laws: Digest of the Pandects – all inclusive

o Roman Law and Law in Europe

o Roman conquests spread law

o Less importance for a time, then renewal between 11th and 13th century

o Formalization of separation of state and church

o Canon law takes its place beside Roman law

o Constructing National Law

o Law as a nation-building tool

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II – The Rationality of the Codes

o Law’s Expansion

o Inextricable link w Chthonic trad

o “Rediscovery” came with the cooptation of Chthonic law and the elaboration of regional customs

o Growth of formal law of the state implies decline in other forms of social cohesion

o Law’s Expression

o Many forms of expression

o Civil code

o Abandonment of casuistic expression

o Importance of technical and abstract expression

o The Centrality of the Person and the Growth of Rights

o Trad, lives of individ people were ones of obligations

o Enlightenment – notion of individual rights and social equality

Conceptualization of person as central (in God’s image)

o Law as Reason’s Instrument

o Enormous consequences of Judaeo-christian trad on law

o Necessity of ensuring that humanity would subdue the world and not be subdued by it

Law has a human goal, a human instrumentality

o What does it mean to be rational in law:

Human construction is possible – from nothing can be developed something

Means of creation is through logical though, and logic is embodied in that which is

known as the law of non-contradiction

III – Changing the World and Changing the Law

o In Chthonic law, change just happened

o The Self-Denial of Roman Law

o Separation of law and social change

o Roman law as product of the world

o No machinery or tradition for effecting major and radical change in law and ∆ none for

transforming the world

o Changing the Idea of Change

o Need to isolate something from the rest to change it

o Law provided a model for what could be done with facts

o Law became product of human creativity

o Effort to separate mind from matter

Law as only matter, thrown up by a particular society

Possibility of separate disciplines of philosophy of law and sociology of law

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Thought that you can be legal just by thinking, with no factual base and that you can be

legal by just looking at facts, with no normative base

Law doesn’t have to have anything to do with life and life doesn’t have to have anything

to do with law (normativity)

o Positive Law and Positive Science

o Vs natural law

o Law now growing from social norms – positive formally created law would be ultimately based on

its social acceptance

o Lawyers construct newer positive law as the instrument of human rationality

o Revolutions, Systems, Language and Interpretation

o Notion of revolution from French law

IV – Civil Law and Comparative Law

o European Identities

o Growth of roman law made the relations between traditions more complex and recognizable as

such

o Roman law = 2 kinds of law

The law of Romans, the ius civile

The law of people who weren’t Romans, the ius gentium – to simplify legal relations of

Romans with the Other

Adjustment of civil law to various external circumstances met by Romans

Plus still the chthonic traditions – non-romans kept their own legal tradition even though

in contact with romans

o Decline of chthonic law and growth of roman law common law of Europe

o Adherence of people to modern, rational law allowed creation of new identities in Europe based

on nation-state

o Construction of states and citizenship as a means of adherence to states implied disappearance of

other forms of identity

Law now excluding other solutions and voices and binding people together within a

single territory (CREATING SPACE)

o Protecting Identity

o Protection of identity achieved not by keeping people in but by keeping people out

o State and law tied together – both are territorial

o The Science of Comparison

o Civil Law in the World

o CVL trad somehow associated w dominance

o Romans dominated, national civilians dominated, world became a zone of influence of civil laws,

then colonization happened

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o Ties in w CML as a “proselytising”

Brierley and Macdonald : Quebec Civil Law

o CCQ as social constitution: text documenting compact between people by which fundamental terms

of society are established

o Centrality of the person

o Places individuals in relation to others, defining the colour of to relationships

o Establishes residual general law: droit commun

o Cc serves as ref point for later substantive legal development, as a model for the form of legal

expression, and as a compass for discovery of other, implicit, principles of private law

o Origins

o Derivative

Follows French Cc of 1804 in its systemic design and linguistic style

o Also an original construction

Incorporates superimposed elements of English and commercial law + local variation on

received Civil law

Blends ancient droit w rationalistic and liberal values of enlightenment

Local influences

Poli considerations

Econ factors

Socio-cultural factors – bilingual character and acknowledgement of specific

legal institutions

o Initial arrangement of Code by subject: concentric circles

o Organisational choices about where a particular topic is elaborated and decisions about the relative

prominence afforded any topic are as much part of the interpretational logic of the code as is the

manner in which individual rules are actually formulated

o Underlying values

o Success of code based on its expression of substantive legal principles that capture the underlying

values of the society it serves

o Main themes

o Individualism

o Authoritarianism

o Sectarianism

2 different socio-econ contexts: rural (family, land and religion) and urban

Civil law codified in 1866 internalized a tension between traditional social values

dominant in rural Qc and those liberal values associated w urban society and a

developing market econ (individualism, commerce and pluralism)

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o Moral dimension of code and social traditionalism

Paternalism and stability

Reflection of traditional values in relation to family and land

o Voluntaristic temper/liberal approach ascribed to Code in terms of its dealing with property and

contract

o Institutional context of CcQ

o Canadian federalism

Property and civil rights as prov juris

But still, Confed removed from prov control fields of law that would otherwise have

remained within realm of Cc

Fed public law, such as Charter, has diminished symbolic role of cc as social constitution

o Judicial org and procedure

CcQ influenced by judicial interp

Absence of a separate Civil law division in Qc courts means that a specific meth

appropriate to codal interp has not been developed

Codal interp undertaken within an institutional and procedural context bearing a

substantial imprint of Common law trad

Adversarial process

Deference to doctrine of precedent

Single benches at trial level

Signed judgements written in a discursive rather than syllogistic style

Appeals on merits

Recording of formal appellate dissents

Judgeship appointments from the practicing bar (not as separate career from the

outset)

o Overwhelming with public law litigation

Portalis

o Code civil comme partie intégrante de la création d’une nation

o Concept de révolution populaire à la base du code

o Centralité de la personne

____________________________________________________________________________

Traditions les plus importantes aujourd’hui : common law et droit civil

o Pourquoi?

Le colonialisme

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o Parmi les 2, laquelle est la plus importante ? Le droit civil

Idée de nation – projet politique de la codification

Transport, transmission et réception

Traduction

o D’un autre côté, le droit civil donne beaucoup d’autorité au premier législateur

Code, dans ses débuts, perçu comme approche scientifique au droit que tous devraient tenter d’égaler

o Perception de modernité : ignorant l’identité nationale qui est intégrée à la structure du Code

o Mots pour qualifier un code

Durable

Abstrait / Général – à une société donnée

Universel / Complet / Totalisant

Structuré

Concis

Accessible

Droit privé

Interprétable

Écrit

Juridique

o Définir le CcQ : Disposition préliminaire

Code civil n’est pas une constitution

C’est une loi ordinaire, loin d’être immuable, il change

Réceptacle du droit commun

Code comme constitution sociale mais pas au sens formel du terme (Brierley &

McDonald) : objectif d’identification des valeurs d’une société

Projet du Code Napoléon se combine à un projet d’unification linguistique en

France (projet politique profondément identitaire qui démarque le code d’un

autre type de loi)

Bilinguisme du CcQ, versions présentés côte-à-côte sur la même page

Glenn : Growth of a formal law of the state necessarily implies the diminution

of social cohesion (p.146)

o Code comme émanation de la puissance étatique (vision totalisante)

o Fuller: the crystallization of custom

o Fuller serait septique par rapport à la place du Code et son impact –

le verrai plus comme la cristallisation de la coutume

o Est-ce qu’on pourrait avoir un code civil dans d’autres domaines du droit?

Il peut y avoir des codes qui ne sont pas civilistes

Mais le code civil est unique dans le sens du fondement du droit commun

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o Exégèse : idée que la structure du code civil est un aspect qui en définit la spécificité

Structuré en cercles concentriques – à mesure qu’on s’approche du cercle central, on a un

niveau de cohérence plus élevé

Importance de la pensée rationnelle : idée de la non-contradiction est au cœur de la pensée

juridique en droit civil

On doit pouvoir réconcilier les dispositions du code qui ont à trait à un même thème

o Est-ce que la France est devenue civile avec l’écriture du Code ou l’était-elle déjà?

Grande similarité dans le droit avant et après le Code

Est-ce que c’est la forme du Code ou son contenu qui définit le civilisme?

À quel point peut-on réduire le civilisme au Code?

Le Code n’est peut-être qu’une représentation de l’importance accordée au

droit statuaire

Le Droit Écossais est un droit civil non-écrit

o Sont civiliste parce qu’ils partent des principes énoncés de la manière

la plus concise et abstraite possible pour les appliquer aux situations

réelles (déductif)

o Mais ça reste à la marge de l’idée de la tradition (le code représente

quand même la pierre d’assise)

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24/10/2013

La tradition de common law

Autorité directe du CcQ par rapport à celle d’un livre de CML

o Écrit par quelqu’un sans autorité

o Donc pas un accès direct à la loi – ça doit passer par l’intermédiaire d’un interprète, le juge

Droit civil à la base est une mise de l’avant de certaines valeurs mais on ne voit pas cet exercice dans le

common law

Imagination publique, rôle dans l’identité

Accessibilité?

Irrationalité vs rationalité

Affirmation de l’empire de la rationalité réunit le droit civil et le CML

Writ (written document)

Ordre donné par le roi ou en son nom à un officiel

o Décrit la question juridique

Seule panière pour les tribunaux royaux d’avoir juridiction

o Leur juridiction était exceptionnelle

o Ne pouvait se prononcer que sur ce qui avait été saisi par autorité royale

Le jury appliquait alors les normes locales

o Étaient des gens du coin et se connaissaient souvent les parties

o Ne donne pas de raison à sa décision pcq n’y avait pas d’appels

Glen ch 7

A Common Law Tradition: The Ethic of Adjudication

I - Birth and development

No absence of law in England before Norman conquest – no evident space for emergence or creation of

new legal trad – so we only speak of birth and careful development

Cautious sampling of new ideas from continent while adapting them to necessities of legal, poli and soci

life among the franci and the anglici of England

Of Judges and Judging

o Only avenue for a Norman legal order, common to the realm, was through a loyal judiciary

o Faster, more efficient, more rational royal courts, using local knowledge, quietly insinuated

themselves into the landscape, without costing too much, and subject to some form of royal audit

o Influence of roman law

20

English judges were diff to amateur Roman ones

But manner of judging similar – actual decision made by amateurs (iudex in Rome, jury

in England)

Acted on basis of instructions from judge /praetor

Complaints in both cases went through process of screening

o Influence of Islamic law

Inns of Court/Madhahib

Lawyer’s Law: Pleading to Issue

o Development through leaning on royal commands for the resolution of individual disputes (by the

chancellor) writs

Each write gave rise to a part procedure to be followed, appro for the type of dispute

Outside the writs, no common law, no way to state a case or get before judge

Pigeon-hole

Instruction from Crown to a royal officer indicating what had to be done to advance

investigation of a dispute

Judge’s function not to decide the case – that left to jury

Judge to decide whether case fell within chosen writ, otherwise court had no jurisdiction

The Secreted law

o If you made it through all that your writ required, and the jury believed you, you would win your

case

o Writs reflected an agrarian, non-commercial, even chthonic society

o CML was in its origins, largely a law of land

o Never a reception of roman law in England in the sense of an incorp en bloc but many roman ideas

in CML, worked over, massaged and put to work in diff ways and in diff language

II – A Communal Law: not a brutal case of imposition of a conqueror’s law

Formal Limits and Informal accommodation

o Held in check by its originators

Courts did not lay claim to large areas of jurisdiction, though they were available if

people chose to use them

Writ syst limited reach of CML to that which receive royal approval

CML was suppletive and not binding

Had to be designated as common, to distinguish it from local and part laws of various

areas with which it was in constant interaction

o Since necessarily and formally limited, left much room for other types of law and social glue

o Separation of law and morals is not simply philo construc in CML hist, was just way things were

and in large measure had to be

o Still, royal courts still carry “natural” justice

21

Communal Relations

o Communal charac of CML manifested itself in ways other than use of the jury and accomod w

other institutions – reached into manner of expression and functioning of CML itself

o Land not owned in CML, but held and enjoyed

Right Reason

o Juries didn’t leave any record of how they thought but is written evidence of judicial rationality

used in CML, in process of def boundaries of writs

o Like qiyas, legitimated by ijma’ – absence of higher authority (no stare decisis)

Judges all colleagues, equals

o Law of relations and obligations, not a law of rights – no notion of subjective rights bc law comes

in between people, not based on the existence of the person in itself

But CML could still be changed to contribute to equality, lib and right without

renouncing its explicitly communal character

III – Incremental Change

Changing Secreted Law

o No concept of changing world

o World as inanimate fact awaiting reshaping but law at least was amenable to some measure of

reforming

o Internal incremental change came about in expression of law and in its avoidance – tricks and

fictions

Changing Fundamentals: Procedure

o If you couldn’t codify substantive law bc there wasn’t any, only thing left was the procedure

o ∆ heart of CML

o If problems, was here

o Idea of changing law in fund way meant changing procedure, i.e. changing writs and forms of

action

o Elimination of formal granting of writ

o Courts now open – people could sue but counsel still had to specify groungs

o Conversion of old procedural rules into substantive law

Removal of writs left substance

Judges borrowed, bc writs only went so far

Since errors possible, development of Court of Appeal and House of Lords

o Procedure remained adversarial

o Nomination of judges quam diu se bene gesserint – can’t be dismissed except for nearly

impossible procedures (contributes to indep of judiciary)

Why?

Political nature of Norman conquest and alliance w judiciary

22

Time of enlightenment

Changing Thought: Legal thought profoundly impressed w need for integration w society so doctrinal

initiatives were few and more impressive when they existed

o By 19th century, English thought had dev a large measure of compatibility w that of continent

o Codification was imposs but general idea of national pos constructed law now received great deal

of support although subj to ongoing resis to role of logic as a CML instrument

o Emergence of stare decisis

So judges making law and systematic doctrinal treatises explicating the law of judges

o But CML for then would not be a set of rules or laws but a practised framework of prac reasoning

in which no formulation is conclusively authoritative (stare decisis then is not like it is now)

IV – Common Law and Uncommon Law: many versions of CML

Common law and nation-states

o Expansion of British Empire and CML

o Less demands for compliance than other trads

o CML is weak identifier

Floats around world but provides little reinforcement for national ids, leaves much room

for accomod w other personal laws

Tendency for CML to be nationalized for purposed of national id

Western law is controllable may be given national direction

Controlling judges is a more difficult process than controlling legislation however,

nationalizing CML means doing something w common law judges and to the trad itself

(e.g. US)

The Practice of Comparison

o Most of its hist: in the process of becoming itself

o Existence in perpetual and institutional co-existence and debate w other laws (e.g. Court of

Equity)

o Civil law information contained in CML

Western Law in the World

o Western expansion Western law widespread

o Expansion in 3 ways

Private

Incld. church (bc seen as in private realm)

Today takes form of globalization

State – idea of nation-state

Rights – sees rights as essentially Western in nature and justification

Judaeo-christian-islamic rel trad of human person in image of God and as his

delegate on earth

23

Greek/Egptian rationality allowing the construction of legal systems and

concepts required for the enforcement of rights

Does not mean that app of notion of human rights in other traditions cannot

happen

Western Law and Corruption

o Western legal trads lends themselves best to corruption

Large institutional structures

Have to protect the structure and beyond

Kronman: Precendent and Tradition

Conversation about precedent, the past, and the present

Critique of precedent by philosophers such as Hobbes

o Value of precedent based in its precedence, or that must respect past for its own sake, is an

absurdity to philosophers/economists

o Judges can make mistakes

o Should replace precedent w rational policy (a study of the ends sought to be attained by the law

and the reasons for desiring them

Object is to consider and weigh the ends of legislation, the means of attaining them, and

the cost

Pros and cons to everything

= Economics

BUT to insist on independence and finality of judge’s natural reason and past’s lack of authoritative force is

to import into law the attitude of philosophy (not philosophy of law but a philosophical replacement for it)

Schauer exemplifies a way of thinking about precedent that is common among contemporary philosophers

of law (thinking further than supporting precedent purely on pastness)

1) Argument for fairness – like cases treated alike

2) Argument from predictability (has costs and benefits)

3) Strengthened decision-making

i. Conserving the decisional resources of decision-makers (their time and energy) by

allowing them to avoid reconsidering questions already considered

ii. Works to dampen the variability that would result from dissimilar decision-makers –

similarity enhances credibility and power of judges and the institutions associated w them

Based on 2 claims

Utilitarian – global welfare, what is best

Deontological – individual rights, what is fair

24

Both ideas are intelligible only if we remove ourselves from our real temporal situation and

examine the society and legal sys we inhabit from what may properly be called a timeless point of

view

Zinn, Disobedience and Democracy: Nine Fallacies on Law and Order

Person who commits civil disobedience must not accept his punishment as right if it isn’t so, if it is

immoral

o We shouldn’t support the “rule of law” in the abstract, purely on its merits, when it causes

injustice

o When unjust decisions are accepted, injustice is sanctioned and perpetuated – when they become

the rule, then the government and its officials should be toppled

o When unjust decisions appear and are violated, it is a healthy discrimination between right and

wrong

o If social function of protest is to change the unjust conditions of society, then can’t stop w a court

decision or jail sentence – if is morally justified, it is so to the end. Stopping at a court decision is

like accepting the loss at a sports game (protest then becomes a token, a gesture)

Citizenry should not behave as if it was the state and had the same interests

o Courts necessarily take side of the state

o Locke and Jefferson: govs are instituted among people for certain ends and if becomes destructive

of those ends, then it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it

Gov not synonymous w people of the nation, is an artificial device, set up by citizens for

certain purposes

No sacred aura, needs to be watched, checked, criticized, opposed

Civil disobedience is the deliberate, discriminate, violation of law for a vital social purpose

There is no social value to a gen obedience to the law, any more than there is value to a general

disobedience to it

o Abstract subservience to the rule of law can only encourage strong tendency of citizens to bow to

power of authority, to desist from challenging status quo

Civil disobedience may involve violation of laws which are not in themselves obnoxious in order to protest

imp issue

o Importance of law being violated would need to be measured against importance of issue

If specific act of civ disob is a morally justifiable act of protest, then the jailing of those engaged is immoral

and should be opposed/contested to the end

Those who engage in civ diso should choose tactics which are as nonviolent as poss, consonant w

effectiveness of their protest and imp of the issue

o Must be a reasonable rel between degree of disorder and significance of issue at stake

25

Degree of disorder in civ diso should not be weighed against false presumption of peace

Must never forget that the state and the citizens are separate in their interests

26

Foundations Plenary #2 (07/11/2013)

“Indigenous” defined in Constitution

Problems with the use of terms such as “indigenous”, “first nations”, “aboriginals”?

o Subsumes people into one category, whereas in reality there is great diversity among them

o Emphasizes their otherness

o Terms come from colonialism

Glenn uses word “chthonic” because what they all have in common is a particular relationship with the

earth (as in autochtone)

o But his chapter on the chthonic traditions is very broad – surface but not diving really into the

material

Some themes for the session

o Status of indigenous law in Canada

o The method question

What are the criteria to identify law?

Who is establishing these criteria?

Who is speaking about law?

o The justice question

o Two specific legal traditions

Any articulation of law is made in relation or response to something

John Borrows reading

o Makes two claims:

FN law is part of Canadian law

FN law exists

In past, was often though indigenous did not have any legal system

o FN law is a fact of life that has persisted

o Canadian law on Aboriginal peoples evolved from inter-societal law

o FN law forms part of the family of legal tradition in Canada, it can be a more general resource

(jurists should be able to use them outside of issues of FN rights)

o FN legal sources can be translated to be accessible to outsiders

History: Aboriginal law at times recognized, or not, sometimes even prohibited

o Royal proclamation

o Some early recognition of Aboriginal law in cases of marriage

o Dominant story: the Indian Act

Several specific prohibitions of cultural/legal practices

Attempted to undermine traditional styles of government

o Sentencing: some recognition of sentencing circles

27

Consensus decision-making, emphasizing relationships and health of all people involved

rather than just the punishment

o In a few cases, the Court has accepted the holding of a feast to put an end to the shame that has

fallen upon their house because of a particular incident (civil damages)

o Questions of subjective state of mind

James Sakej Henderson (video)

o Investigating Indigenous jurisprudence:

What? FN law as a dream

Who? How? There is a particular way to learn, involving practice and ceremonies

Leaning FN jurisprudence means doing it on their terms

Hoebbel and Llewellyn

o How to investigate Cheyenne law?

Ideological path – rules, ideal patterns, real ways (looking for real ways)

The descriptive path – actual patterns out of behaviour

The trouble case – the view that prevails when things go wrong, what is imperative and

not just proper, remedies

Functional/Structural Approach

o Llewellyn & Hoebel, The Cheyenne Way

o The killing of a Cheyenne by another Cheyenne is a sin which bloodies the Sacred Arrows and

endangers the people; it is a crime against the peace and the people, and normally within the

exclusive jurisdiction of the tribal authorities

o The rule that the kin of the victim of a killing are privileged to seek self-redress in their own right,

or to retaliate, is no longer law. However, the authorities are directed to take due account of the

natural feelings of the victim’s kin

o It is the expected duty of every citizen, and esp of the military societies, to intervene in disputes

before they reach the stage of killing

o Demonstration in jurisprudence

Casimel v Insurance Co of BC

Grandparents were effectively parents under customary adoption

Delgamuukw v BC Trial

Proving “organized society”

R v Gladstone

Intertribal trade characterized as commercial right

R v Marshall; R v Bernard

Translating use of land into exclusive occupation

Interpretive Approach

o Clifford Geertz – haqq, adat, dharma

28

Starts with provisional term in indigenous language

Unravel cognate term to get “legal sensibility”

Reflect back on assumed grounds of your legal sensibility

o James Clifford and others

Ethnography is production of a cultural text or obhect

Translations actively negotiated by specific, located persons

In a given research context (often colonial)

Culture isn’t something lying on the ground you discover and put in a text – your

ethnographic writing is a product of your own experience

Poetic translation

o Invisible translator (as if text was written in its original language)

o Mark of the foreign (text struggling with way of expressing original)

Prof. Anker’s points

o Law is translation – the trickster, rather than “our terms” v assimilation

How much are you going to translate?

o Translation is a constructive activity, in a context (the sausage factory)

o The “mark of the foreign” – centaur idiom makes space for new meaning – is transformative

Songlines reading

o In CML, title deed is based on

Unbroken chain of custody

Definition of geographical boundaries

o Mapping as exertion of power over territory

o Mapping is influenced by view of property and territory

Glenn ch.3

A Chthonic Legal Tradition: To Recycle the World

Chthonic = live in or in chose harmony with the earth – attempt to describe a tradition by criteria internal to

itself

A tradition emerges: no point of origin

o Some sat info so varied can’t speak of a single traditions – yet amongst such diversity the trad also

tells us there are constants (identity)

o Of sources and structures

Most evident feature of trad has been its orality in both form and substance

No great preoccupation with voluminous detail

Trad still includes transmission of detail: words of ceremony, techniques of life – but

only at level which can be managed by human means of recall

29

Law as a repertoire, a repository in which all or most share and in which they may

participate

Important info is learned by all so they can participate in the ongoing process

Bc of its orality, does not lend itself to complex institutions – less danger of pecuniary

and institutional corruption, fewer positions of prestige and authority – rule is more

consultative – no armies, so chiefs can continue to function only to extent that they

generate general concensus

Dispute resolution: open and immediately accessinle

Law is immediately applicable, by adjudicators and preferably by the parties themselves

o On ways of life: recall those of Europe before enlightenments

Family law characterized by informality (like Chthonic law in general)

Living close to the land and in harmony with it means limiting technology which could

be destructive of natural harmony

No incentive for dev of complex machines, no way of accumulating wealth

through their use

Human person not elevated to a position of domination or dominium over

natural world

Use of land: communal or collective, no formal concept of property, no right of

alienation

Problem of ip law for protecting chthonic knowledge and art (collective vs

original to an individual)

Crime: responsibility of civil society – injury to a member = to the group

Absence of courts in most instances, reparation by negotiation between groups,

payment or equivalent punishment

The web of beliefs: law as social glue – chthonic law interwoven with all beliefs

o Law’s domain: law indistinguishable form all else in the chthonic world but not co-terminous with

all else. Isn’t controlling over all else (didn’t get to call all the shots) – it has its place.

It is kept in place by the ongoing presence and vitality of all other elements of the

chthonic world (e.g. religion)

o Reason’s domain: some forms of innovation, notion of invention / creation submerged in long line

of intellectual forbears

Since present indiv is submerged in past and wider community, there is no indiv power to

obtain the object of indiv will. There are no rights.

Chthonic law protects you, but you have no way of protecting yourself against it

o Law and the cosmos

Religion as constant presence absence of formal structure

No such thing as a secular world or simple facts of nature

30

Natural world is divine – not to harmed

Laws of nature neither descriptive nor positive: they are normative and there is a moral

duty to obey the law

Can it be described as customary law? Depends on our concept of custom. Custom in

sense that people adhere to it, then yes,

Change and the natural world

o Immutable tradition and hostility to change – Glenn disagrees

o Time not as a race an arrow or a flowing commodity but as an envelope, an environment

o Change in time, but not actual passing of time: world must be re-cycled

So there is great flexibility in chthonic existence

Best view if that trad has a fundamental core: the sacred character of the world

Tradition not immutable but vulnerable – open to endless debate as to its interpretation

and application – can be rejected in its most fundamental teaching and disappear

Chthonic ways and other ways: way is unstructured, blending into surrounding landscape – did not have a

sharp institutionalized sense of their own identity when european people arrived amongst them

o Identification based on chthonic tradition: abstract and general, allows great flexibility on the

ground

o Chthonic and other identities: there are no pure chthonic traditions in world today

Exchange of info w chthonic trad is facilitated by its open character

Middle ground greated – place in between though there is constant danger of

discontinuity in the traiditio of the oral tradition

Yet the continuing existence of chthonic trad indicates that openness and vulnerability are

not the dominant criteria in the ongoing life of a trad – it depends rather on what the trad

says

o The state as middle ground

Greatest indicator of interdependent character of chthonic id today is the state – no

chthonic peoples in the world who do not live within a state

Complex relationship, and variable - crisis

State constructed by western powers in colonized territories

State constructed by western powers in process of perm settlement in colonized

territories

o Chthonic topics

Influence of chthonic though on enviro attitudes in west has been significant

Chthonic concept of legal relations between human beings and land is also one which has

generated enormous reflection in western world

Chthonic though in matters of crime and criminal repression also provides an ongoing

alternative to western practices of determination of individual guilt and incarceration

31

o Chthonic peoples, states and human rights

Do not represent the new diasporas – they are arguing based on a prior claim

Present constitutions are said to have to be shaken out to become more inclusive, less

conflictual, more accommodating of cult diversity through deployment of a wider range

of consti devices

Rights dominate contemp state structures in west – are object of itnl declarations

Rights of chthonic peoples follows as consequence of existence of state structures which

surround them – but what of chthonic law’s relation to the state (superior or inferior to

state defined rights)?

o Universalizing the chthonic

Not known as aggressive or dominating peoples – nature of trad is broadly supporting of

its non-universalizing character, at least by aggressive means

__________________________________

Retour en classe

Jusqu’à quel point une tradition peut-elle être fragmentée tout en restant une même tradition?

Glenn fait l’argument que les traditions « autochtones » partagent certains point communs qui leurs sont

fondamentaux

o Is this a stretch? Is he maybe just defining chthonic law by what it is not? Defining chthonic

legal tradition by its others/otherness?

o Évolutionnisme? Perspective occidentale? Port de jugement?

32

Talmudic tradition (14/11/2013)

Assise de la tradition est divine, échappe au pouvoir des hommes

Collégialité entre Dieu et les humains

Absence de début de la tradition (Moise n’est pas l’origine)

Mont Sinai = révélation d’éléments concrets de la tradition

o Dieu donne la loi suite au consentement du peuple juif (« covenant »)

Création d’Israël remet en cause la structure même de la tradition talmudique à l’intérieur du pays

Glenn, ch. 4

Revelation on Mount Sinai as a critical juncture: completely changed existing law, from there, constant dialogue

(inverted pyramid)

A tradition rooted in revelation

o Written Torah = Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (General

electric light bulbs never dim)

o Oral Torah

Starts with Moses explaining and elaborating written tradition

Methods of learning by heart

Since started w Moses had status equal to written teaching oral tradition was also

Divine

With diaspora, became necessary to write down oral content Mishnah

Interpretation and commentary of the Mishnah the Talmud

Mitzvat Talmud Torah

No specific author to Talmud – was never completed, a door was closed but a winder

opened – Talmud not meant to end the debate but to provide means for its continuance,

within the tradition

Talmud is most important single element in bran-tub of jewish legal trad: contains a great

deal of varying opinion but did not purport to exclusivity

Also codes, legislation, Sanhedrin, general assembly of elders, response (by

rabbis)

o Applying divine law

No appeals

o The divine law applied

Open procedural and adjudicative structure

Law applied as substantive, not procedural

Private law resembles that of Western and Islamic trads

Also much that would not be considered law in West

33

Family law = consensual

Obligations but no rights

The Talmud and revelation

o Halakhah and aggadagh

Halakhah = law

Aggadah = the rest of the content of the Torah and the Talmud

Both have source in divine will and revelation

Talmudic tradition covers almost everything – religion is everywhere (incld. everyday

life)

o Talmud and Torah

Talmud not directly from Moses, but still rooted in Torah, so of same importance

Relation between the two = feedback

o The style of the text

Not declaratory or imperative

Argumentative – relaxed and ongoing argument

Nobody tells you what the law is purpose of response

Unfinished

Talmud = open to all, includes voices of the many

o The style of reason

Combines endless variations of life with the use of simple but really technical models

Resistance to the systematizing impulse

Discipline of thought but is polyvalent and tolerates contradiction

o The individual in the Talmud

No individual rights – but obligations

Does place human in proviledged position in universe

Talmud, the divine will and change

o Of schools, traditions and movements Diversity

o Talmud and corruption: more acute in ultra-orthodox (almost as if the fact that the limit dialogue

causes corruption of tradition)

Talmudic law and state law

o Talmudic law and Jewish identity: Jewish identity defined by recall and use of information, or

memory (i.e. the Talmud).

o Talmudic retreat? – Possibility for Talmud to be deeply influenced, adapted, from contact with

other legal traditions (bc it is unfinished)

This may assure survival of Talmudic law

But Talmudic law also criticized on grounds of equality and equity

o Talmudic example?

34

Some suggest obligations are stronger than rights – they offer greater protection

o A universal Talmud?

Talmud does not teach that it must be universalized

Generally open – can only justify aggression as way of defence

Horowitz

Divine basis but system based on dialogue

Paramountcy of the spirit over the letter of the law

Law and morality all together – reciprocal effects between law and ethics

Emphasis on duties rather than on rights

Title One: Torah – Chapter II Preliminary notions

Covenant

Pentateuch

No distinction between religious, legal and ethical

Perelman: Interprétation juridique

Textes légaux sont un élément mais pas l’unique point de départ, de l’interprétation juridique

On interprète un texte quand il manque de clarté. Un texte est clair aussi longtemps que toutes les

interprétations raisonnables qu’on pourrait en donner conduisent à la même solution. Dans les

circonstances qui sortent de l’ordinaire, le texte manquera donc de clarté. Quand le sens clair d’un texte

contredit la finalité de l’institution qu’il est censé servir, ou heurte l’équité, ou conduit à des conséquences

socialement néfastes, on s’efforcera de l’interpréter

Pas toujours des personnes « compétentes » qui interprètent un texte

Interprétation statique v interprétation dynamique

o Statique : la volonté du législateur (apparait objectif mais ne l’est pas)

o Dynamique : en fonction du bien commun ou de l’équité, tels que le juge les conçoit (risque de

supprimer la différente entre la règle qui a été promulguée et celle que l’on voudrait instaurer)

Problème du droit juif qui interdit l’existence de nouvelle législation – quand même place au dialogue

Caractéristique de l’interprétation judiciaire consiste d’une part dans son respect des institutions et de leur

fonctionnement habituel, d’autre part, dans la recherche de l’équité

35

Islamic Law

Qur’an

o Niveau de conciliation des suras et position de Mohammed favorable aux femmes comme

dépendant de la situation de Mohammed

Jusqu’à récemment cette position considérée comme contraire à la foi islamique

(perspective interne)

Mais développement d’une perspective plus « externe »

o Pas de séparation entre droit et non-droit

o Contradictions sont la faute des humains qui essaient de comprendre, pas de Dieu ou Mohammed

Hadith

o Deux aspects : Isnad et Hadith

o Incompatibilités entres les hadith – il y en a tellement

o Une partie des hadiths sont donc faux

Ijma’- ijtihad

Qiyas

Difficulté d’insérer l’état dans la pyramide

Dar al-harb, dar al-islam, dar al-suhl

Est-ce qu’il y a plusieurs Islams?

Nahrain: on effects of British rule on Islamic law in India

British rule cemented Islamic law, rendering it incapable of adaptation and taking away its inherent plurality.

Distinction between personal and secular law = part of political and economic project of British, solidified

their power

Then embarked on process of codification and translation (uniformisation) while ignoring customary law

and inherent plural nature of Islamic law

o Islamic law had changed form but also substance

Perception of Muslims and Hindus as oppositional, distinct, and homogeneous – which was false

foundation of conflict between people, and forced people into these two categories (just among Muslims

was great diversity)

Family law = only space for ulema to assert power

o Law became ground for pursuing political goals

o i.e. religion became ground for pursuing political goals

o Further uniformisation in effort to unite “Muslim” people against British rule

o Implement Shariat Application Act and Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act (DDMA) in 1937

and 1939 respectively

o Assertion of Muslim identity often affected women most – women’s rights misused to further

political agenda while marginalising their interests

36

o Women = markers of identity

Glenn

An Islamic Legal Tradition: The Law of A Later Revelation

Draws attention to many similarities with Talmudic Law (174, 175, 176, 188)

Law-seeking process not adversarial as in CML and not investigative as in CVL

o Emphasis on compromise

o Concrete facts over broad principle or universal abstract norms

Remarkable lack of institutional support – qadi occupies formal institutional position but beyond this

Islamic law is simply sustained by the community

Influence of Arabic chthonic law in substance of Shari’a (e.g. law of family and succession)

Recognition of private property and state/communally owned property (parallels the West)

Law of obligations impressed with the broader ethic of the Qur’an

o Prohibition of speculation and the unfair distrb of risk

Closing of the door of ijtihad taqlid

Purely subjective is proscribed – no word for “right” in legal language BUT general importance of the

individual in the tradition

o Human welfare has priority over liberty

o Does not purpot to guarantee equality of treatment of all persons

World as sacred yet also obligation to pursue knowledge

Admission of some form of secular authority, toleration for local, information tradition where it is

compatible w Islamic teaching

NOT binary – pluralism (e.g. five classes of conduct)

Many islams? Umma as different enough from non-umma

No compulsion in religion vs operative concept of apostasy

Islamic tradition of human rights based on the Islamic state

o Islamic lawyers challenge “rights” to ensure respect for the human person, pointing to flagrant

violations, nationalization of universal norms and the need for social arrangement that are in the

common interest

Exchange between western and Islamic ideas

Jihad as striving, special status of “people of the book”

Vers une tradition future (28/11/2013)

Glenn

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Livre essaie de faire deux choses à la fois: descriptions des traditions et argumentation qu’en à la place de

la place de la rationalité dans diverses traditions

La nature des grandes traditions

o Complexité et diversité interne

Chaque trad a des sous-trad internes

Traditions transversales (eg rationalité, tolérance, jugement, etc)

o Tendance universaliste

« At the core of the universalizing tendency of any tradition is necessarily its

normativity »

Complexité et mutlivalence

o Bivalence (beurre) = illusion d’après Glenn

o Multivalence : catégories sont vagues, entrecroisées

Exemple du tas de sable

« On ne peut pas être à moitié enceinte » - évolution scientifique

“We must all be agnostics to some extent” – il faut refuser de faire profession de foi pour

adhérer à la multivalence

o “Complex traditions thus reach the stage of complexity, and of being major traditions, because of

their ability to deal with diversity, contradictions and the demands for what is usually known as

change.”

Sous-traditions

o Contraditions = pas grave

o Multivalece devalue l’approche comparative

Pas d’incommensurabilité

Coexistence de traditions incompatibles ainsi possible

o Cohérence externe

Sous-traditions ne peuvent exclure toute autre

o Une méta-tradition?

“Sustaining diversity means accepting (not tolerating) the major, complex legal traditions

of the world (all of them). It means seeing them as mutually interdependent such that the

loss of any of them would be a loss to all the others, which would then lose a major

source of support, or at least of self-interrogation”

Existence d’une méta-tradition puisqu’à l’intérieur d’une meme tradition des traditions

diverses coexistent

Kasirer

1) Île de la Désolation

2) Île de Speranza

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3) L’autre île

Droit robinsonien? Lecture relationnelle de l’ordonnancement juridique

Droit pour nommer, pour donner un sens au monde autour de nous

Droit comme rituel, ordonnancement

Multivalence individuelle

Kasirer rejète l’idée que le droit est nécessairement relationnel – la diversité est-elle une précondition du droit?

Glenn dit que le fondamentalisme attaque la diversité à l’intérieur du droit et vient saper l’autorité du droit

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