Alexander Somek

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alexander Somek (2008)

Alexander Somek (born April 7, 1961 in Vienna ) is a European lawyer . He is currently professor of legal philosophy at the law faculty of the University of Vienna .

Life

Somek studied law and philosophy at the University of Vienna from 1980 to 1984, where he also received his doctorate. Then he was a university assistant at the law faculty of the university until 1992. In 1992 he received his habilitation in the fields of legal philosophy and legal theory, and in 2001 for constitutional law. In the following years he was visiting professor at the University of Kansas and associate professor at the University of Vienna. In 2003 he became a professor at the College of Law at the University of Iowa , where he held the Charles E. Floete Chair . He was also visiting professor at Princeton University and the London School of Economics. In the academic year 2012/13 he was a fellow at Princeton University and from 2007 to 2008 Draeger Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin .

Since August 2015 he has been Professor of Legal Philosophy at the Law Faculty of the University of Vienna.

He has been married to his wife Sabine (née Michor) since 1989.

plant

Somek's work deals with fundamental questions of legal philosophy , legal theory , constitutional law , European law and international law .

In his earlier work, which was influenced to some extent by the critical legal theory of Duncan Kennedy and Roberto Mangabeira Unger , Somek dealt with the political function of systematic legal thought. He tried to defend the creative and constructive character of legal system formation against an understanding of jurisprudence that understands it as a mere “description” or “representation” of the content of legal norms. Somek was so skeptical of this understanding that he subjected the idea that legal norms were abstract objects to a sharp criticism oriented towards Saul Aaron Kripke and Willard Van Orman Quine .

The further development of the early work led, especially with regard to the criticism of the reification of norms, in the draft of a postpositivist theoretical approach, which Somek developed together with Nikolaus Forgó .

Somek then turned to the idea of ​​equality, which he viewed from both a social justice and a constitutional perspective. In his opinion, equality can be understood as a barrier to rational behavior. It arises from the prohibition to discriminate against others. Bans on discrimination ultimately protect people from having to deny who they are.

Despite his energetic defense of equality as a moral ideal, Somek sees anti-discrimination protection as no miracle or panacea in the fight against social injustice. On the one hand, equality is shaped by a few aporias . For example, the protection of the right to equality only begins when systemic forms of discrimination have long since done their work. On the other hand, it would be a mistake to place protection against discrimination at the center of a social model. According Somek which European Union but that this willy-nilly done. His controversial criticism of the dominance of protection against discrimination seeks to expose the associated shortcomings and deficits. This part of Somek's oeuvre also manifests his critical stance towards the neo-liberal tendencies of the European integration process (which is largely in line with authors such as Wolfgang Streeck , Fritz Scharpf , Martin Höpner and Michael Wilkinson ).

The writings on equality are based on the fundamental methodological conviction that public law is not an “object” (such as a system of “norms”), but a way of thinking that deals with the normative questions raised by the exercise of sovereign power. Somek has defended this core belief in later writings devoted to the cosmopolitan constitution.

After Somek moved to the United States in 2003, he became increasingly interested in the question of how modern capitalism affects people's self-image and leads to the loss of a civic perspective. In the context of the European Union (especially its legislation, which in some cases has taken on paternalistic traits) and in view of the increasing deconstitutionalization in connection with crisis interventions, he tried to reconstruct the relevant developments and to design a model of forms of collective self-determination that are no longer exclusively political in nature are. This was one of the focal points of his work on the authority of the European Union and the emergence of a cosmopolitan type of constitution. Among other things, these works were about an apolitical, “managed” form of collective self-determination in which pathologies can be found of modern individualism manifest.

Somek is, as he himself puts it, an "avowed ancient political philosopher". Somek means on the one hand that the psychologically and sociologically subtle constitutional analyzes of ancient authors such as Plato and Aristotle are far superior to modern liberal “constitutional law” in terms of insights; on the other hand, he is convinced that the project of modern constitutional law itself has come to an end and that jurisprudence would be well advised to say goodbye to case law and turn to the study of Niccolò Machiavelli .

More recently - as part of a move from the USA back to Vienna in 2015 - Somek began working out his theory of the legal relationship . In a way, he takes over from the legal positivism of the Vienna School the idea that a theory of law should idealize its subject matter as little as possible. At the same time, Somek clearly distinguishes his project from Hans Kelsen's pure legal theory . He defends a "relational" approach to law and insists that law can only be properly understood if it is first viewed as a particular relationship between people. In his opinion, the legal relationship can be understood as a construct that people use in order to be able to live with one another despite major moral differences.

Somek's legal theory has strong affinities with the legal philosophy of German idealism , romanticism, and Marxism . However, he tries to express their traditional topics and thoughts in a language that is not entirely foreign to current Anglo-American legal philosophy.

His most recent work on the knowledge and sources of law combines insights from the historical school of law with leitmotifs from Hegel's phenomenology of the mind .

Books

  • Knowledge of the law (with comments by Andreas Funke and Thomas Vesting) Tübingen 2018
  • Legal Philosophy for Introduction , Hamburg 2018
  • The Legal Relation: Legal Theory after Legal Positivism , Cambridge 2017
  • Introductory legal theory , Hamburg 2017
  • The Cosmopolitan Constitution , Oxford 2014
  • Engineering Equality: An Essay on European Antidiscrimination Law , Oxford 2011
  • Individualism: An Essay on the Authority of the European Union , Oxford 2008
  • Legal knowledge , Frankfurt / Main 2006
  • Social democracy: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Max Adler, Hans Kelsen and the legitimacy of democratic rule , Vienna 2001
  • Rationality and Discrimination. On the binding of legislation to equality law , Vienna & New York: 2001
  • The subject of legal knowledge. Epitaph of a legal problem , Baden – Baden 1996
  • Postpositivist legal thinking: form and content of positive law (with Nikolaus Forgó), Vienna 1996
  • Legal System and Republic: On the Political Function of Systematic Legal Thought , Vienna & New York 1992

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alexander Somek , University of Iowa
  2. ↑ Alexander Somek , University of Vienna
  3. ↑ Somek, Alexander (1992). Legal System and Republic: About the Political Function of Systematic Legal Thought. Vienna & New York: Verlag Österreich
  4. ↑ Forgo Nicholas; Somek Alexander (1996). Postpositivist legal thinking: form and content of positive law. Vienna: Facultas
  5. ↑ Somek, Alexander (2001). Rationality and Discrimination. To bind legislation to equality law . Vienna & New York: Springer
  6. ↑ Somek, Alexander (2001). Social democracy: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Max Adler, Hans Kelsen and the legitimacy of democratic rule. Vienna: Publishing House Austria.
  7. ↑ Michelman, Frank (2015). Book Review: The Cosmopolitan Constitution . Constellations 22 (4).
  8. ↑ Somek, Alexander (2014). The Cosmopolitan Constitution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  9. ^ Walker, Neil (2010). Review: The Anti-Political Polity . Modern Law Review. 73: 141-154.
  10. ↑ Somek, Alexander (2008). Individualism: An Essay on the Authority of the European Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  11. ^ Menendez, Augustin Jose (2009). Book Review: Individualism . International Journal of Constitutional Law. 7 (3): 554-550.
  12. ↑ Alexander Somek (2018). Blindness and Hinsight . German Law Journal. 19: 1557-1566.
  13. ↑ Somek, Alexander (2017). The Legal Relation: Legal Theory after Legal Positivism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  14. ↑ Patterson, Dennis. After legal positivism . Jurisprudence Jotwell.
  15. ↑ Somek, Alexander (2018). Knowledge of the law . Tübingen: Mohr.
personal data
SURNAME Somek, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION European lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna