Changes in Legal Sources, Norms and Normativity
Scientific coordinators: Catherine Thibierge / Cyril Sintez
The “Changes in Legal Sources, Norms and Normativity” research area examines the profound transformations of legal norms and, more broadly, of social norms in our hyper-normative societies. Our approach is to identify, observe, diagnose, analyze and rethink these transformations, and to recast our representations of law and normativity in the light of our own work and that of the great intellectuals of our time.
It pursues two complementary and convergent objectives: the creation of transnormative conceptual tools and the proposal of a notion and typology of normative postures.
Creation of transnormative conceptual tools
The primary ambition of this area is to forge new transversal conceptual tools capable of accounting for the mutations of norms underway in our Western societies, making it possible to establish precise normative diagnoses, and proposing an in-depth renewal of our theoretical representations in the field of normativity.
These tools are forged through collective research projects involving, for each project, between ten and fifty national and international researchers, tenured and doctoral students, lawyers and non-lawyers (philosophers, sociologists, managers, etc.).
Three of these research projects, published in 2009, 2013 and 2021, focus respectively on normative force, normative densification and normative guarantee. Together, they form a triptych on contemporary normativity.
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The components of this triptych share a common objective and methodology.
The aim is to go beyond a classic, familiar and narrowly legal notion, and to propose a new, transdisciplinary and inclusive notion, capable of accounting for emerging forms of normativity.
Thus, over and above the notion of compulsory and binding force usually attached to the rule of law, the concept of normative force, by its combined scope and rigor, makes it possible to include the force of standards which, although lacking in compulsory force, nevertheless prove to have genuine normative force - or force of reference - in their ability to guide behavior. This is the case for simple recommendations issued by regulatory authorities such as the French Broadcasting Council (Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel).
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Or, beyond the well-known notion of legislative inflation, which is strictly legal and quantitative, normative densification, by the richness of its process, includes the quantitative and qualitative rise in power, not only of laws, but of legal and social norms in general. It allows us to grasp a major trend in the evolution of our contemporary societies.
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Or, finally, beyond the notions of sanction and constraint, traditionally erected as criteria of the rule of law, normative guarantee includes the latter while opening up much more widely to other ways of guaranteeing the legal norm and other types of norms.
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The components of this triptych also share a common methodology: a constructivist methodology that allows us, starting from a hitherto unused and unexplored expression that has never been the subject of research, to discover, once all the contributions have been synthesized, the definition and content of our research object. Cyril Sintez clarified the content of this methodology in a contribution to the book on normative densification, and drew the consequences for the evolution of law in a book entitled “Le droit construit” (to be published in spring 2022).
Proposed notion and typology of normative postures
The mutation of norms and normativity is also questioned by revisiting the thinking of certain intellectuals of the second half of the 20th century. The aim is to interrogate both the work and the life of an author, confronting them with the question of norms as it is posed today in our Western societies. Two of the laboratory's research partners, Émeric Nicolas and Jacqueline Guittard, are behind the project.
A series of colloquia is devoted to Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida. Intended to be interdisciplinary and international, each colloquium brings together researchers from different backgrounds over two days.
The aim of this multi-faceted research is to identify the intellectual and personal postures of these authors in the face of the norm.
- Do the paths taken by each of them differ?
- Does each path reflect an individual stance towards the norm? Submission, emancipation, circumvention and the struggle of the individual in the face of the common norm are just a few examples.
- Are these intellectual postures also normative? In other words, were they also principles governing the behavior of their authors, and not just ideas within their works? If so, it would then be possible to infer from these intellectual postures a typology of normative postures of subjects (of law, of norm).
The question of narratives in law, and more broadly of narrative, has emerged as a key issue in each of the books publishing the symposium proceedings. To investigate this particular issue, a “special” symposium was organized in Amiens. The resulting book will be published in January 2022 by Mare et Martin.
At the same time, based on the findings of these symposia, a multi-disciplinary research workshop has been set the task of producing a final work proposing the notion of normative posture. It will be published at the end of 2022. An article by Cyril Sintez on the notion has already been published in the Revue interdisciplinaire d'études juridiques in December 2020.
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Contact
cyril.sintez@univ-orleans.fr
References
- C. Thibierge et alii., La Force normative, naissance d’un concept, LGDJ, Bruylant, 2009.
- C. Thibierge et alii., La Densification normative, découverte d’un processus, Mare et Martin, 2013.
- C. Thibierge et alii., La Garantie normative, exploration d’une notion-fonction, Mare et Martin, 2021.
- J. Guittard, É. Nicolas, avec C. Sintez, Barthes face à la norme , Mare et Martin, coll. « Libre Droit », 2019.
- J. Guittard, É. Nicolas, C. Sintez, Foucault face à la norme, Mare et Martin, coll. « Libre Droit », 2020.
- C. Sintez, « Les postures normatives face à la gestion normative de la crise sanitaire de la COVID-19 », RIEJ. 2020. 65.
- J. Guittard, É. Nicolas, C. Sintez, Narrations de la norme, Mare et Martin, coll. « Libre Droit », 2021.
Upcoming scientific news
- Book publication: J. Guittard, É. Nicolas, C. Sintez, Deleuze face à la norme, Mare et Martin, coll. « Libre Droit », 2022.
- Restitution symposium: « Deleuze face à la norme »
- Book publication: C. Sintez, Le droit construit. Penser le droit par le constructivisme, Dalloz, coll. « Méthodes du droit », 2022.
- Conference to present the book in Orléans.
- Call for papers for the “Derrida face à la norme” symposium