Available in Russian
Author: Aldar Chirninov
DOI: 10.21128/1812-7126-2023-5-58-80
Keywords: legal argumentation; constitutional justice; non-monotonicity; defeasible reasoning; constitutionality
The decision-making process is often faced with uncertainty and a lack of necessary information. Therefore, decision makers sometimes have to limit their reasoning to the available data and replace unknown variables with certain assumptions. Accordingly, as new information becomes available, the findings can and should be revised. The premises on which constitutional judgments are based are no exception. This article identifies the reasons that determine the non-monotonicity of legal reasoning in general and constitutional argumentation in particular. The author examines the mechanism for implementing non-monotonicity in constitutional reasoning and gives examples when the inclusion of new premises in the discourse changes previous constitutional assessments. The article examines types of premises, the modification of which makes it necessary to clarify the conclusion about the constitutionality of a challenged legal norm. The author includes among them changes in constitutional provisions, changes in the content of current legal regulation, changes in the conditions for the implementation of constitutional provisions and legal norms (the so-called general social context), as well as finding errors that were made at different levels of reasoning. The article also explores the factors that limit the non-monotonicity of constitutional argumentation. It is shown that the cost of clarifying constitutional reasoning, including the correction of errors, may exceed the benefit that the legal order will receive as a result of such clarification. In this sense, protected constitutional values (legal certainty, social reliance on legal rules, stability of relations, etc.) become limiters of the non-monotonicity of constitutional argumentation. The author concludes that the non-monotonic nature of constitutional argumentation requires openness of argumentative dialogue, since such openness reduces the risks of ignoring circumstances that are essential for correctly resolving a constitutional case.
About the author: Aldar Chirninov – Candidate of Sciences (Ph.D.) in Law, Senior Researcher, Institute of Philosophy and Law, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Yekaterinburg, Russia.
Citation: Chirninov A. (2023) “U Boga dobavki ne prosyat?”: nemonotonnost’ konstitutsionno-sudebnoy argumentatsii [“Should one not ask God for more?”: the non-monotonicity of constitutional argumentation]. Sravnitel’noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, vol. 32, no. 5, pp. 58–80. (In Russian).
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