Jan M. Broekman is since 1996 Professor emeritus of Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) and of Philosophy and Medical Ethics at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam (Netherlands). During a long and distinguished career he has won an international reputation for his work in the fields of legal anthropology, legal theory and the philosophy of law and medicine. He published widely in these fields and lectured throughout Europe, Latin America and the United States of America. This Festschrift reflects some important themes of his work, especially the ones concerning the intertwinement of legal, medical and moral discourse and its related aspects in technology, politics and anthropology. Due to their different fields of research, the authors approach their topic from their own scientific and cultural perspective. The contributions provide the reader with well-documented and skilled insights into specific questions in many countries like Germany, Brasil, Chile, Italy, Belgium and the United States of America. The composition of the colourful range of contributions is focussed on the core theme of both legal modernism and post-modernism: the tacit assumption of a discursive unity behind thinking, acting and talking. The mimetic representation of man and humanity in legal and medical discourse is built on this assumption. Fundamental questions belonging to the discursive unity are dealt with, for instance concerning language and reality; being and mimesis; norms, rights and facts. They are confronted with actual questions in health care (quality of life, autonomy, the elderly), in European politics and in economics. The contributions document the leading developments in today's legal, medical and philosophical debates. They will provide the reader with outstanding thoughts on the future orientation of law in society.
Frank Fleerackers Books



Indeed, if the legal field is to be understood as instrumental to democracy's cohabitation of individuals, research on dispute resolution remains pre-eminent as a means to understand how individual views differ and how different views can be overcome. As a central part of conflict analysis, such research would assist an interdisciplinary quest for a dynamic understanding of democracy and law. It would focus on how different individuals with different conceptions of the good can live together in their community, in their world. Scientific research in the fields of communication, economics, psychology, history, political theory and philosophy, to name but a few, would side with legal theory in a shared ambition to analyze the way individuals are affected by their views as well as by their institutions, in order to provide society with a dynamic means to solve conflicts and enhance citizenship or legal awareness. Such research necessarily coincides with empathy-oriented education, directed towards an understanding of different conflict positions and the related comprehensive or non-comprehensive views affecting them. An affective education, analyzing all affective mechanisms of societal or interpersonal disputes and their legal or alternative resolution. A clinical education, offering an interactive simulation with regard to these positions and their affective impact, demonstrating how individual views continuously affect the positions taken, how disputes are affected by the legal or other institutions that attempt to solve them, and how the effectiveness of legal or other solutions to the conflict at hand depends on a practice of affective legal analysis. Thus legal and civic education, by way of affective narration and clinical simulation, join affective legal analysis in its endeavor to provide society with a similarly affective and non-rationalizing approach of legal awareness.
Exploring the critical relationship between conversion and communication in legal thinking, this book delves into the interplay of language with legal texts, judgments, and concepts. It emphasizes that jurists must navigate shifting social behaviors and political landscapes, reflecting the dynamic nature of law in contemporary culture. The work addresses the complexities of wisdom versus automatism, individual privacy versus social norms, and philosophical reflections on the ongoing transformations within the legal field in the 21st century.