This panel brings together various scholars of law and politics from Europe and United-States whose research in various fields (constitutional law, discrimination law and theory of law). They look at the contemporary outcomes of mechanisms of judicial decision making. As opposed to classical literature on legal reasoning, which is much concerned with legal interpretation, this...
How Judges Decides? The Hypothesis of Legal Constraints
A theory of legal constraints start with a realistic conception of the interpretation, according to which the legal actors (ie. authorities authorized to produce legal rules) are free to choose between several possible meanings of the texts which they have to apply. Nevertheless, the legal actors do not decide in a completely arbitrary way. From...
Judges and the Judging of Mixed-Race Racial Identity Discrimination Claims
A growing number of commentators view discrimination against multiracial (racially-mixed) people as a distinctive challenge to racial equality. This perspective is based on the belief that multiracial-identified persons experience racial discrimination in a manner that judges steeped in historic black-white notions of racism cannot comprehend. I dispute that premise and deconstruct its Personal Identity Equality...
Renewing a Court: Consequences for Judicial Decision Making and Identity
Over the course of the next five years, no less than 9 out of 12 judges on the Belgian Constitutional Court will have to be replaced because of mandatory retirement. As it stands, the law provides that half of the judges are former politicians, who, theoretically, need not even be lawyers. Of the other half,...
The judicial decision making protocol: the case of the French Conseil constitutionnel
This contribution explores the professional and social relationships that takes place within the Supremes Courts. It proposes to take the French Conseil constitutionnel as an example. Classical literature on legal reasoning, especially in France, tries to explain decisions by referring to rational choice theory (economic analysis of law for instance). In contrast, I focus on...