Dynamic Logic of Legal Competences
This work addresses the problem of modeling norm-changing legal concepts for legal theorists and logicians, but it is incremental as it builds on existing dynamic epistemic logic frameworks.
The paper tackles the formalization of legal competences, specifically power and immunity, by reinterpreting dynamic epistemic logic deontically, resulting in a completely axiomatizable logic that distinguishes legal ability from permissibility in a German contract law case.
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.