Abstract:
Today, the future role of the lawyer and the legal profession is often seen being threatened, notably by the advent and rapid development of technologies generally referred to as “artificial intelligence” (AI) including or being related to other concepts or fields, such as big data, nanotechnology or synthetic biology. In the future, AI and related technologies, it is argued, may even replace major tasks handled by the legal profession or the lawyer as a whole.
In this regard, it is noteworthy that the concept of “artificial intelligence” and other technologies were all qualified as oxymora or paradoxes, that is to say a rhetorical figures “in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction”.
However, technology is not the only field where such contractions occur. Virtually every scientific field and also legal science as well as life in general is today a fertile breeding ground for and witnesses a considerable rise in the use of oxymora and paradoxes, from ‘coopetition’ in competition law to ‘sustainable development’ in international law to mention but two.
This paper will first provide an overview of some relevant oxymoronic concepts in the field of law. As a second step, it will show how these concepts, by virtue of their contradictory nature, challenge the predominant modes of legal logic and legal reasoning. Third and last, it will outline some linguistic and cognitive skills future lawyers should acquire as a result of the challenges provided by the rise in oxymora and paradoxes, or so-called “essentially oxymoronic concepts”.
Speaker:
Prof. Rostam J. NEUWIRTH, Professor of Law, Head for Department of Global Legal Studies, University of Macau – Faculty of Law
LL.M. (McGill), PhD (EUI)
Rostam J. NEUWIRTH is Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law of University of Macau where he also serves as the Head of Department of Global Legal Studies. He received his PhD degree from the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence (Italy) and also holds a Master’s degree in Law (LL.M.) from the Faculty of Law of McGill University in Montreal (Canada). His undergraduate studies he spent at the University of Graz (Austria) and the Université d’Auvergne (France). Previously, he taught at the West Bengal University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS) in Kolkata (India) and the Hidayatullah National Law University (HNLU) in Raipur (India). Prior to that, he worked for two year as a legal adviser in the Völkerrechtsbüro (International Law Bureau) of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs.