Sieckmann JR (2022)
Publication Language: English
Publication Type: Book chapter / Article in edited volumes
Publication year: 2022
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.
Edited Volumes: Objectivity in Jurisprudence, Legal Interpretation and Practical Reasoning
City/Town: Cheltenham / Northampton, MA
Pages Range: 216-232
ISBN: 9781803922621
DOI: 10.4337/9781803922638.00018
This chapter discusses the problem of the rational justification of objectively valid norms. For the author, this problem amounts to the conflict between the objective validity of the law (i.e., validity in the sense that every reasonable agent must accept the respective norm as valid and, hence, must apply and follow it) and individual autonomy (i.e., the capacity of individuals to self-legislate). Since autonomy requires the consent of a norm's addressees, how is it possible to provide an objective justification of norms to autonomous individuals? The author resolves this puzzle by relying on his theory of autonomous reasoning. According to this theory, autonomous agents justify normative judgments as a result of the exercise of their normative competence in the balancing of normative arguments. While normative arguments - the claims made by autonomous agents - are not objective from the semantic, ontological or epistemic points of view, statements of the validity of a norm as a normative argument are objective, since they refer to normative arguments established as valid by autonomous agents. Normative judgments that express the result of the balancing of normative arguments are objective from the semantic point of view, even if they are not objective from the ontological or epistemic point of view. According to the author, a norm's substantive definitive validity implies not only that this norm is the result of successfully completed argumentation but also that it is actually binding - that is, that its addressees must apply and follow it. This claim of bindingness (i.e., the norm's qualification as objectively valid in the sense that every reasonable agent must recognise it as valid) must therefore be justified. What can be justified against autonomous agents is, however, merely that they must accept that a norm supported by reasonable convergence of autonomous agents is claimed to be binding.
APA:
Sieckmann, J.-R. (2022). The problem of normative objectivity. In Gonzalo Villa-Rosas, Jorge Luis Fabra-Zamora (Eds.), Objectivity in Jurisprudence, Legal Interpretation and Practical Reasoning. (pp. 216-232). Cheltenham / Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd..
MLA:
Sieckmann, Jan-Reinard. "The problem of normative objectivity." Objectivity in Jurisprudence, Legal Interpretation and Practical Reasoning. Ed. Gonzalo Villa-Rosas, Jorge Luis Fabra-Zamora, Cheltenham / Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 2022. 216-232.
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