Exceptions

European Journal of Critical Jurisprudence

Periodicity Annual

Year of foundation 2024

Status active

Article languages english

Journal licence CC BY, open access

Scientific domain Social sciences, Law, Political science and public administration, International relations

Journal type Scientific

Description

Exceptions. European Journal of Critical Jurisprudence (EXC) aims to establish a forum for the critical, transdisciplinary study of the law and its ramifications in the many spheres of human social and individual life. The scope of the journal is not to redefine prescriptively what critical jurisprudence is or ought to be. As a minimum common denominator, critical jurisprudence is here envisaged as the combination of a hermeneutic of suspicion towards received legal and political narratives (especially those of legal positivism and liberal legality) with an emancipatory goal of subverting structures of domination deeply embedded in the increasingly worn-out fabric of the juridical. The Exceptions journal has been conceived as an organ of Nomos: Centre for the International Study of Law, Culture and Power, based at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland.

We invite contributions that align with the aims of the centres, including postcolonial theory, feminist jurisprudence, critical race theory, law & literature, as well as other critical theoretical engagements, cultural theory, critique of ideology, critical sociology, anthropology of law, critical comparative law, or critical legal histories. We are also keen to consider papers epistemologically written from the internal point of view of the law if coupled with a consciously critical edge.

eISSN: 3071-8538

Editorial team

Editor-in-Chief:

dr hab. Przemysław Tacik

Associate Editors:

Leila Brännström

Cosmin Cercel

Gian Giacomo Fusco

Tormod Otter Johansen

Alexandra Mercescu

Anna Piekarska

Publisher

Jagiellonian University in Kraków

Journal content

volume

issue

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1/2024

Publication date: 13.12.2024

Editor-in-Chief: Przemysław Tacik

The publication of this volume was financed by Faculty of International and Political Studies at the Jagiellonian University and Nomos Centre.

Cover design: Gian Giacomo Fusco

On the cover: Karl Blossfeldt, “Urformen der Kunst”

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Editorial Page PDF Table of contents PDF

Issue content

The Pope’s Two Bodies: A Note on Medieval Juridical Theology

Riccardo Baldissone

Exceptions, 1/2024, 2024, pp. 7-50

https://doi.org/10.4467/30718538EXC.24.001.21205

The medieval Papal Revolution was the first successful attempt by a body of intellectuals to affirm what we would now call the political priority of principles. At that time, this priority was expressed in juridical and theological terms. In my essay, I start from Kantorowicz’s sidelining of medieval ecclesiastical duplications to show a more general downplaying of the cultural (and political) hegemonic role of the Papal Revolution and its long-term legacy. I trace the transformations in the European lexicon of notions such as corporation, world, body politic, theology, and abstraction to argue that the synergy between the Papal and the scribal revolution actually constructed law, theology, and politics as we know them. More in general, this synergy in its Scholastic embodiment produced our familiar image of the world as an object and a content of books. I suggest that reconsidering how the Papal Revolution both triggered and joined a series of processes that turned the page of our history may perhaps support our effort to turn the page again.

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Exceptions There Are That Are Not the Case

William Watkin

Exceptions, 1/2024, 2024, pp. 51-90

https://doi.org/10.4467/30718538EXC.24.002.21206

There is something essential we need to know of power that is visible only when power makes certain exceptions. Power, we are arguing, is fundamentally without content. This occluded piece of information about power is partially illuminated at every exception to a rule but appears to only be fully visible to thought when a state of exception is declared by someone in power. This seems to be the crucial point of the theories of the exception elaborated by Giorgio Agamben, Carl Schmitt and Walter Benjamin. Schmitt because the sovereign decision is content indifferent. Benjamin because it is only if you remove referential content from the terms exception and rule that you could mistake the two words for the same thing. Agamben because according to his theory of signatures, the law appears as ultimately contentless. Through a close engagement with the theories of these three authors, this article suggest that an exception is not some statement or ruling which stands outside the rule, but is the process wherein the interior of the rule, its actual rulings, is either negated or suspended. Is this what the legal exception is, the indifferentiation of law’s specific contents?

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Tantalizing Liberty: Post-totalitarianism and its Relevance to the Problems of Contemporary Democracy

Tomáš Havlíček

Exceptions, 1/2024, 2024, pp. 91-114

https://doi.org/10.4467/30718538EXC.24.003.21207

More than thirty years ago, the countries of the Eastern bloc experienced a significant societal rebirth in rejecting of totalitarianism. Over the years, these policies have taken steps that have led them to the current state of legal democracy and late capitalism. But every system we know has its perversions and inevitably leads to a social crisis. In his ‘state-destroying’ work The Power of the Powerless, Václav Havel presents several concepts that helped him describe the totalitarianism that the countries of the Eastern bloc experienced: ‘post-totalitarian system’, ‘post-democracy’, and ‘dissent’. This paper argues in favor of the relevance of these concepts for the contemporary world, although, it will be claimed, its cruelty and inhumanity are much more subtle than in the regimes we have known so far.
The primary objective of this article is to draw parallels between well-known totalitarian regimes and the current (neo)liberal democracy through the conceptual framework of post-totalitarianism. Originating from the period preceding the fall of the Iron Curtain, this notion takes historical evolution into account, focusing on the CEE regions post the Iron Curtain era/after the regime change. The author applies Havel’s insights and theories to analyze this historical trajectory and asserts that we inhabit a system inherently containing totalitarian elements, where the fulfillment of liberty hangs on an unreachable branch. Consequently, this study delves into the possibilities for societal development or change within today’s post-totalitarian system, by having recourse, among other arguments, to Havel’s notion of post-democracy.

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Nevermore Algorithmic Justice: The Future and The End of Law

Andrej Krištofík

Exceptions, 1/2024, 2024, pp. 115-132

https://doi.org/10.4467/30718538EXC.24.004.21208

This article deals with the possible impact of automated decision- making on law. It argues that such could constitute a death of the law. To demonstrate this point, the article describes the underlying technological process of machine learning. It describes its negative impact on possible future reinterpretation and development of law that reflects societal development. As such, the tools of automation represent an ideal tool for the conservation of the existing status quo. Further, this article deals with the idea that for law to be just it needs to be not only personalized but always made anew in each judgement. This is also made impossible due to the described nature of the automation which makes the law not only forever cemented in its ways, denying any contestation, but rids it of any justice, which is the legitimizing element of the laws’ violence.

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From Blurred Authority To Authoritarian Capital: Rethinking the Normative Roles of States, Non-State Actors and Regimes

Monica Thiel

Exceptions, 1/2024, 2024, pp. 133-164

https://doi.org/10.4467/30718538EXC.24.005.21209

It is an imperative to investigate the reasons for the rise of authoritarian states in a way that will affect global democratic stability and worldwide order within international law. Although international law primarily regulates state relations, there are no regulations that address state, non-state actors and regimes’ authoritarian practices. The article introduces authoritarian capital to highlight the development of blurred authority through 5 differing national, international and transnational phases within international law. The development of authoritarian capital from states, non-state actors and regimes from the theoretical framework in the 5 phases reveal gaps within international law to adequately address declining democracy and increasing authoritarianism within national, international and transnational norms. In addition, the advancement of international law is constrained due to an under theorized state and non-state actors use of authority within institutions and legal norms. Consequently, international law emphasizes merely state behavior and obligations rather than non-state actors as participants in the law making processes. By paying attention to the 5 differing phases of authoritarian capital, the article delivers a new and improved understanding of growing types of authoritarianism within democratic countries and non-democratic countries to help legal scholars to address state and non-state actors’ increasing authoritarianism within international law.

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