Conflict of rights as a rhetorical antinomy

When judges adjudicate cases in light of national constitutions or the ECHR, they often deal with the conflict of individual rights and have to perform a “balancing exercise” to justify their choice in favor of one of them. Different methodologies can be applied to investigate the problem of why judges make different choices when they counter-balance seemingly the same rights under similar provisions. In this article, an attempt is made to apply the methodology of new rhetoric, elaborated by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca. Legal positivism cannot provide the answer of how the choice is made if the conflicting rights belong to the same level in the hierarchy of legal sources. This issue lies rather in the realm of rhetoric than in the domain of legal theory, because the “preferable”, “choice”, and “adherence” are philosophical rather than legal terms and relate to values and hierarchies. Arguments in law, according to Perelman, are rhetorical by nature and decision-making in law is based on rhetorical demonstration, not on the principles of formal logic. The choice between two lines of arguments is always a value-choice, and can be grounded in public opinion as well as in the moral choices of the judges. The conflicting values can be considered as a rhetorical antinomy that should be resolved. The antinomy is defined as mutual incompatibility of two laws, provisions, or legal arguments that can be equally justified as valid and applicable. From point of view of rhetoric, different outcomes that the judges of national or international courts arrive at in the process of applying the same provisions to the same facts can to a large extent be explained by the fact that, although they share common values, they build them differently into hierarchies and assign them different weight in their value-systems. An analysis of two decisions–the cases of Konstantin Markin and Nikolay Alekseyev, which provoked academic debate among Russian constitutional lawyers and judges–justifies this thesis. It also enables one to identify the ways in which rhetorical antinomies in human rights cases are being resolved by the Russian Constitutional Court and the ECtHR.

About the author: Anita Soboleva – Candidate of Philological Sciences, LL.M., Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia.

Citation: Soboleva A. (2018) Konflikt prav kak ritoricheskaya antinomiya [Conflict of rights as a rhetorical antinomy]. Sravnitel’noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, no.1, pp.113–126.

References

Alexy R. (2000) On the Structure of Legal Principles. Ratio Juris, vol.13, no.3, pp.294–304.

Alexy R. (2010) Formula vesa [Weight formula]. In: Rossiyskiy ezhegodnik teorii prava, no.3, Saint-Petersburg: Juridicheskaya kniga. (In Russian).

Barak A. (2005) Purposive interpretation in Law, Princeton, NJ; Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Belov S.A. (2016) Ratsional'nost' sudebnoy balansirovki konstitutsionnykh tsennostey s pomoshch'yu testa na proportsional'nost' [Rationality of judicial balancing of constitutional values by means of the proportionality test]. Peterburgskiy yurist, no.1, pp.63–75. (In Russian).

Budylin S. (2013) Konventsiya ili Konstitutsiya? Mezhdunarodnoe pravo i predely gosudarstvennogo suvereniteta [Convention or Constitution? International law and limits of state sovereignty]. Zakon, no.12, pp.64–80. (In Russian).

Donohue L.K. (2016) The Future of Foreign Intelligence: Privacy and Surveillance in a Digital Age, New York: Oxford University Press.

Dworkin R. (1977) Taking Rights Seriously, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Dworkin R. (1982) Law as Interpretation. Texas Law Review, vol.60, no.3, pp.527–550.

Dworkin R. (1993) Life’s Dominion: An Argument about Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom, New York: Knopf.

Dworkin R. (2007) Justice on Robes, Delhi: Universal Law Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd.

Ivin A.A. (2000). Teoriya argumentatsii [Argumentation theory], Moscow: Gardariki. (In Russian).

Lapaeva V. (2012) Delo “Konstantin Markin protiv Rossii” v kontekste problemy natsional'nogo suvereniteta [Konstantin Markin v. Russia case in the context of national sovereignty]. Sravnitel'noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, no.2, рр.77–90. (In Russian).

Moschella M. (2016) To whom do children belong: parental rights, civic education and children's autonomy.New York: Cambridge University Press.

Perelman Ch. (1982) The Realm of Rhetoric, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

Perelman Ch. Olbrechts-Tyteca L. (1969) The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

Pérez A.T. (2009) Conflicts of Rights in the European Union: A Theory of Supranational Adjudication, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rawls J. (2005) Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Samokhina E. (2013) Genezis argumentativnoy teorii prava (H.Perel'man): dis. … kandidata yuridicheskikh nauk [The genesis of argumentative theory of law (Ch.Perelman)], Saint-Petersburg: The Institute of State and Law of The Russian Academy of Sciences. (In Russian).

Senderowicz Y.M. (2010) Controversies and the metaphysics of mind, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Shah T., Farr T., Friedman J. (eds.) (2016) Religious Freedom and Gay Rights: Emerging Conflicts in the United States and Europe, New York: Oxford University Press.

Soboleva A. (2006) Topical Jurisprudence: Reconciliation of Law and Rhetoric. In: Wagner A., Werner W., Cao D. (eds.) Interpretation, Law and the Construction of Meaning: collected papers on legal interpretation in theory, adjudication and political practice, Heidelberg: Springer, pp.49–64.

Soboleva A.K. (2002) Topicheskaya yurisprudentsiya: argumentatsiya i tol­kovanie v prave [Topical jurisprudence: arguments and interpretation in law], Moscow: Dobrosvet. (In Russian).

Stone J. (1964) Legal System and Lawyers’ Reasoning, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Timoshina E.V., Kraevskiy A.A., Salmin D.N. (2015) Metodologiya sudebnogo tolkovaniya: instrumenty vzveshivaniya v situatsii konkurentsii prav cheloveka. Vestnik Sankt-Peterburgskogo universiteta, ser.14, no.3, pp.14–34. (In Russian).

Varlamova N.V. (2014) Printsip proportsional'nosti kak osnova osushchestvleniya publichno-vlastnykh polnomochiy. In: Shirvindt A.M. (ed.) Aequum ius. Ot druzey i kolleg k 50-letiyu professora D.V.Dozhdeva, Moscow: Statut, pp.4–30.

Vaypan G. (2014) Acquiescence Affirmed, Its Limits Left Undefined: the Markin Judgment and the Pragmatism of the Russian Constitutional Court vis-à-vis the European Court of Human Rights. Russian Law Journal, vol.2, no 3, pp.130–140.

Viehweg T. (1993) Topics and Law: a Contribution to Basic Research in Law. Frankfurt am Mein: Peter Lang.

Volkov A.A. (1996) Osnovy russkoy ritoriki [The foundations of Russian rhetoric], Moscow: Izdatel'stvo filologicheskogo fakul'teta MGU. (In Russian).

Waldron J. (1989) Rights in conflict. Ethics, vol.99, no.3, pp.503–519.

Zucca L. (2007) Constitutional dilemmas: conflicts of fundamental legal rights in Europe and the USA. Oxford: Oxford University Press.