An extremely successful session on Wednesday: many thanks to all those who attended and contributed, especially to James Drummond Young for leading the session.
As a non-lawyer, I was particularly struck by the emphasis on the way natural law insights played a part in the exercise of judicial decisions in what otherwise have seemed fairly dry, fairly technical cases of commercial law. The willingness of courts, particularly the higher ones, to pay regard to moral principles in interpreting the law so as to achieve a just result, was (to me at least) both unexpected and rather reassuring. Whilst the application of natural law in the framing of statutes was something I'd thought about before, I hadn't given much thought to the way it was also applied -at least implicitly- in the interpretation and application of law.
By the end of the session, it was clear that a number of issues in this area could be developed. How can the certainty required by law be balanced against the need for judicial discretion in achieving just outcomes? How can the danger of the sensibility of judges in applying law differing too much from that of the surrounding society be avoided? How confident can we be that the moral principles actually applied by judges are the truly morally right ones?
Handouts from the session are available here.
Next class: Odile Pilley on Challenging economic ideology: case studies from international organizations 25 February, 6pm [Details here.]
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