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The main purpose of this book is to offer a logical analysis of legal propositions, especially of constitutional propositions. This analysis shows the relationship between truth-conditions of legal propositions and the problem of indeterminacy. Where the law is indeterminate, legal propositions lack truth-values. The background of this approach is the philosophical debate between realism and antirealism. The book deals with the notions of legal norms and legal systems and provides an analysis of the notion of legal indeterminacy and its relation to gaps, contradictions and the vagueness of legal concepts. It shows also that the simple model of a legal system is not sufficient to account for the complexity of legal propositions referring to legal systems of some degree of maturity. Several notions from legal dynamics are presented in order to bring to light the importance of concepts like applicability or hierarchy for the determination of the truth-value of a legal proposition. Thus the primacy of constitution becomes a central idea in the theoretical reconstruction of most contemporary legal systems; a conceptual explanation of this idea is presented and some conclusions from that explanation are drawn. Finally, a particular conception of constitutional interpretation is proposed. Special attention is paid to the relationship between interpretation and legal indeterminacy and, more specifically, to the problem of the discretion enjoyed by the organs entrusted with applying the constitution and also to the several theses that have been discussed controversially in the context of constitutional interpretation, such as the relevance of the intentions for the interpretation of the constitution and for the justification of judicial review

AbstractThe first principle of cognitive linguistics is to look for the origins of linguistic powers in robust mental operations not specific to language. For millennia, language science has assumed that human beings possess mental operations for unifying, combining, and merging patterns to create expressions, and that, conversely, they can analyze expressions they encounter to recognize patterns that were combined to produce them. The third section of this article reviews some of the literature concerned with these powers to combine patterns into expressions and to analyze expressions into patterns that were blended to create them. Any assumption about such a linguistic power takes out a loan on theory that must be cashed out with a non-language-specific explanation if the theory is to count as cognitive. One can stipulate to the existence of some unexplained power that is needed for linguistic performance, but that stipulation is insubstantial until it is grounded in a demonstrated non-language-specific operation. An assumption or stipulation about a linguistic power is cashed out when we locate and model the non-language-specific cognitive operations that make that linguistic power possible. The first section of this article presents the proposition that the non-language-specific mental operation that accounts for these linguistic powers is blending, otherwise known as conceptual integration. The second section provides a topical review of blending in specific communicative form-meaning pairs and their combination. Blending is the foundation of creativity in communication, or, more specifically, in the creation and combining of form-meaning pairs, also called "constructions."

The aim of this article is to demonstrate how body-representations offer an opportunity for its visual interpretation from a biographical point of view, enhancing, on the one hand, the image's own narrative dynamics, and, on the other, the role of the body as a place of incorporation of experiences, as well as, a vehicle mediating the individual interaction with the world. Perspective founded in the works of the artists Helena Almeida and Jorge Molder, who use self-representation as an expression of these incorporated (lived) experiences, constitutes an important discursive construction and structuring of their narrative identity through visual creation, the artists enable the other with moments of sharing knowledge, creativity and subjectivity, contributing also to the construction of the contemporary, cultural and social imagery.

Fiqh; Islamic jurisprudence

Frontmatter -- Inhalt -- Jahrestagung 1988 -- Erster Beratungsgegenstand: Der Gleichheitssatz -- Zweiter Beratungsgegenstand: Gesetzesgestaltung und Gesetzesanwendung im Leistungsrecht -- Verzeichnis der Redner -- Verzeichnis der Mitglieder der Vereinigung der Deutschen Staatsrechtslehrer -- Satzung