A. Soeteman – författare

The study presented in this book was entered upon by me from a legal point of view. 'Legal logic' has been known for a long time, concerning itself with the methodology of legal and in particular judicial reasoning. In modern days, however, this 'legal logic' is sometimes also connected with modern formal logic, as it has been developed in the works of G. Boole, A. de Morgan, G. Frege, C.S. Peirce, E. Schroder, G. Peano, A.N. Whitehead, B. Russell and others. For me this gave rise to the as yet not very specific question about the meaning of modern symbolic logic for law. Already in an early stage it appeared that, although traditional legal logic and modern symbolic logic both concern logic, this may not create the misapprehension that a similar matter is at issue. Both concern themselves (among other things) with reasonings and reasoning. Traditional legal logic is, however, as it was said by the German legal theoretician K. Engisch: "a material logic that wants us to reflect on what we have to do if we -within the limits of actual possibility- wish to reach true, or at least correct judgements" (Engisch, 1964, p.5). Modern symbolic logic on the other hand is not concerned with the truth or correctness of the result of an argument, but with its validity, i.e. the question when or under which conditions the truth (correctness) of the conclusion is guaranteed by the truth (correctness) of the premisses.

While the modern world is divided into roughly 200 sovereign states, many of the problems we are experiencing are global in scale and cannot be solved by nation states acting alone. The one world has many different traditions, too: very different ideas exist about how a nation state should be organised politically, the universality of human rights, relations between women and men - indeed, about everything of any importance. Different developments in our world pose a challenge to legal and social philosophers. What can we say about justice in a pluralist world? Is there some universal justice? Are there universal human rights? What is the function of the state in the modern world? How should the law deal with global problems, such as the environment or migration? And how can we or should we argue about such issues?Such are the problems dealt with by the 20th world congress of the International Association for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, held in Amsterdam in June 2001 and published in this book, which can be read with pleasure and profit by legal and social philosophers, students of human rights, political philosophers and all those who want to know about the challenges posed to the law by modernity.

The study presented in this book was entered upon by me from a legal point of view. 'Legal logic' has been known for a long time, concerning itself with the methodology of legal and in particular judicial reasoning. In modern days, however, this 'legal logic' is sometimes also connected with modern formal logic, as it has been developed in the works of G. Boole, A. de Morgan, G. Frege, C.S. Peirce, E. Schroder, G. Peano, A.N. Whitehead, B. Russell and others. For me this gave rise to the as yet not very specific question about the meaning of modern symbolic logic for law. Already in an early stage it appeared that, although traditional legal logic and modern symbolic logic both concern logic, this may not create the misapprehension that a similar matter is at issue. Both concern themselves (among other things) with reasonings and reasoning. Traditional legal logic is, however, as it was said by the German legal theoretician K. Engisch: "a material logic that wants us to reflect on what we have to do if we -within the limits of actual possibility- wish to reach true, or at least correct judgements" (Engisch, 1964, p.5). Modern symbolic logic on the other hand is not concerned with the truth or correctness of the result of an argument, but with its validity, i.e. the question when or under which conditions the truth (correctness) of the conclusion is guaranteed by the truth (correctness) of the premisses.