Abstract
Our lives are permeated by various forms of legality, produced by multiple bodies-both statist and non-statist. The pervasive presence of non-statist, soft law schemes in the contemporary society poses a challenge for legal theory: how to conceptualize legal-like structures that evolve outside the boundaries of the state and are able nonetheless to exert significant normative power? Understanding this phenomenon requires, I argue, a new model of law that will not be bounded by the binary (either/or) structure of traditional jurisprudence and sociology of law. I respond to this challenge by developing a degree-theoretic model of legal-normativity which I term fuzzy law. This model offers a new conceptual vocabulary for thinking about soft law as a social phenomenon. The model draws on three main theoretical sources: the theory of complementary pairs, fuzzy-set theory, and defeasible reasoning. I examine the jurisprudential and sociological implications of the fuzzy law model through a discussion of the dialectics of reasoning with fuzzy rules and an exploration of the coordination dynamics of quasi-legal systems.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 343-370 |
| Number of pages | 28 |
| Journal | Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 1 Jul 2015 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2015 Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence.
Keywords
- Fuzzy-set theory
- complementary pairs
- defeasible reasoning
- fuzzy law
- quasi-legal systems