Special Workshop Abstract

The paper is restricted only to contributions of analytic philosophers’ and logicians to legal theory. Historically speaking, it would be interesting to have a definite view about such facts as the influence of rhetorical practices of the Sophists on the development of legal procedures or the significance of Stoic logic for the quality of Roman law. There is also the reverse direction, which should be investigated, namely the role of law for the development of logic. Let me mention also the discovery of deontic logic in the Middle Ages and Hume’s thesis that ought is not derivable from is. The latter is perhaps the most important single philosophical view, which was incorporated by many legal theoreticians.

If we come to recent times (19^th – 20^th), various philosophical studies on ways of argumentation seem particularly important. These investigations include not only formal-logical, but also those undertaken from a more or less informal point of view. However, there is also a more general question. Many lawyers claim that legal thought is specific and requires special tools (legal logic, legal semiotics, etc.). The approach of analytic philosophers and logicians seem different. Most of them is convinced that there basically only one logical paradigm which is applied in many fields. Of course, there are some peculiarities, but they are rather secondary. If this perspective is correct, the difference between lawyers’ legal theory and philosophers’-logicians’ thinking about law is serious.