Hans Lindahl

If, as I have argued, boundaries include what they exclude, and exclude what they include, then what is strange is not simply outside: it is also within; and what is outside is not simply strange; it is also to a lesser or greater extent our own.

Biography

Hans Lindahl is Professor of philosophy at Tilburg University. His research and teaching focus is on legal and political philosophy, with a special emphasis on issues pertaining to political representation, sovereignty and (collective) identity, in particular in the context of the EU legal order. A sub-theme within this general line of research is the structuring of politico-legal space and time from the first-person plural perspective of a 'we'. In dealing with these issues he draws on both phenomenology and analytical philosophy. Hans Lindahl obtained his law degree with a minor in economics at Universidad Javeriana (Bogotá, Colombia), 1981; M. Phil. in Philosophy, Universidad Javeriana, 1988; and his Ph.D in Philosophy, at Higher Institute of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Louvain (Leuven, Belgium), 1994. He has operated as lecturer in law at the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá (1987-1988). He has been a legal practitioner in Colombia (1982-1988). In 1994 he was a post-doc researcher in philosophy at Tilburg University and later became associate professor of philosophy at Tilburg University. He now holds the chair of legal philosophy at Tilburg. 

Abstract

The Boundaries of Legal Orders in a Postnational Setting: Conceptual, Normative and Institutional Issues

The boundaries of state legal orders are becoming increasingly irrelevant in the era of postnationalism. This paper argues that postnational legal orders don’t overcome boundaries; instead, they set new (spatial) boundaries that include and exclude. Discussing how legal boundaries do their work of including and excluding, I argue that a central normative challenge confronting law in the future is how to make sense of freedom, justice, and security if we can neither rely on the communitarian assumption that these values can only be achieved in a bounded community, nor on the cosmopolitan assumption that these values can only be realized in an all-encompassing legal order. Institutionally, the challenge is to devise arrangements that can foster boundary negotiations between legal orders in a way that neither assumes that those negotiations should aim to join together the orders into a single, all-encompassing global order nor that they should safeguard those legal orders as simply separate and distinct units.