Law and Time

The research area Law and Time explores different manifestations of constitutive historicity regarding Law’s answers and the way these face contemporary societal challenges and the instability of performative contexts. Considering directly the tripartite motto (plurality, vulnerability, undecidability) which specifies UCILeR’s strategic program, its approach is a critical-reflective one, not only open to diverse meta-dogmatic points of view, but also sensitive to the bridges with dogmatic-doctrinal perspectives (these ones privileging the fields of criminal and constitutional law), as well as to the relationship between dogmatic stabilizing and problem-solving practices. This means intertwining the discussion of diverse problematic cores, going from the interdisciplinary debate concerning the practical-cultural autonomy and limits of Law (its experience of personhood and its relationship with Europe’s legacy) to the rethinking of narrative identity (concerning gender, race, sexual orientation, health condition, practical-cultural and geopolitical provenance).Is it possible to say that facing societal legally relevant challenges in a time of multileveled and multicentered rulings means simply exploring a macroscopic approach in terms of public policies and their statutory prescriptions (with the corresponding strategic and tactic specifications)? Or do in contrast our present circumstances (involving the paradoxical challenges of homogenizing globalization and self-celebrating plurality) demand a reinvention of jus which preserves the continuity of an integrating validity order and its unmistakable microscopic model of community (inseparable from the experience of analogically comparable concreteness)? Which possibilities and limits do these two radically distinct (albeit indispensable) experiences of Law reciprocally impose? These are some of the leading questions which identify this research area.

Coordination: José Manuel Aroso Linhares