Dynamic Logic of Legal Competences

TL;DR

This paper introduces a formal logic framework for legal competences, especially for power and immunity, using a deontic dynamic epistemic logic that captures norm changes and distinguishes legal ability from permissibility.

Contribution

It presents a novel formalization of legal competences with a deontic reinterpretation of dynamic epistemic logic, enabling explicit modeling of norm changes in law.

Findings

Logic is fully axiomatizable

Successfully applied to German contract law case

Distinguishes legal ability from legal permissibility

Abstract

We propose a new formalization of legal competences, and in particular for the Hohfeldian categories of power and immunity, through a deontic reinterpretation of dynamic epistemic logic. We argue that this logic explicitly captures the norm-changing character of legal competences while providing a sophisticated reduction of the latter to static normative positions. The logic is completely axiomatizable, and we apply it to a concrete case in German contract law to illustrate that it can capture the distinction between legal ability and legal permissibility.