LEGAL THEORY WORKSHOP
presents
Andrei Marmor
Cornell University Law School
Soft Law, Authoritative Advice, and Nonbinding Agreements
Friday, September 29, 2017
12:30 - 2:00
Solarium (room FA2), Falconer Hall
84 Queen's Park
One of the most fascinating developments in the domain of international law in the last few decades is the astonishing proliferation of non-binding legal instruments, generally referred to as soft law. These are norms, commitments, or directives, explicitly avoiding the imposition of legal obligations on the relevant parties. The legal status of soft law is debated in the literature, but my concern in this essay is different: I aim to provide an account of the rationale of soft law from the perspective of the practical reasons that can rationalize such instruments. The argument is focused on articulating the idea of authoritative advice, suggesting that when authorities advise their putative subjects, they purport to give the subject what I call presumptive reasons for action. I explain what presumptive reasons are and what their rationale is, suggesting it as a model for the practical reasons in play when soft law operates vertically, in cases of nonbinding directives of international authorities. Horizontal soft law, that normally comes in the form of international treaties, is also explained by employing the idea of presumptive reasons, coupled with the mutual accountability relations that such agreements invariably constitute.
Andrei Marmor is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Philosophy and Law. Prior to joining Cornell in 2015, he was Professor of Philosophy and Maurice Jones Jr Professor of Law at the University of Southern California. Having obtained his first law and philosophy degrees at the Tel Aviv University in Israel, and a D.Phil at Oxford University, UK, he returned to Tel Aviv University, where he taught as professor of law for ten years, before moving to the US. His research interests span philosophy of law, moral, social and political philosophy, and philosophy of language. Professor Marmor published dozens of articles, six book monographs and a number of edited volumes. His most recent books include Social Conventions: from language to law (Princeton, 2009), Philosophy of Law (Princeton, 2011) and The Language of Law (Oxford, 2014). His books and articles also appeared in numerous translations, including in Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, and Italian. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, and the editor of several important volumes in legal philosophy, including, most recently, The Philosophical Foundations of Language in the Law (with Scott Soames, Oxford 2011), and The Routlege Companion to Philosophy of Law.
A light lunch will be provided.
For more workshop information, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca
