Born Polish in 1946. Educated at the Universities of Dundee (LL.B in Law and Philosophy 1969) and the University of Glasgow (Advanced Study Scholar). Taught at University of Wales, University College Cardiff (Lecturer in Law 1971-1974) and then at the Faculty of Law in Edinburgh (successively, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader, and Professor of Legal Theory 1994- 2011). I am now an emeritus professor but am still engaged in research but much more peacefully.
RESEARCH
My research follows two strands. Firstly, I look at Social and Legal Theory within an ethical and theological context. Here the aim is to produce a socio-theoretical account of forms of rationality in different styles and levels of legal process understood in their correlation with different forms of social order and self-ordering.
Connected with this is my second strand which involves Foundations of Legal Reasoning as they affect the working of the law and legality and help put in place models for the furtherance of just and transparent modes of dispute settlement. This makes the study of legal reasoning itself ethically important. In this context I organised a workshop on the Universal and Particular in Legal Reasoning, the proceedings of which were published in 2006. I will also be organising a workshop on The vulnerability of self and the risk of action. This will be multi disciplinary work engaging with philosophy, political theory and theology as well as with law and legal theory, as well as computer science and AIAI. In looking at what it means to live following rules, I explore a machine metaphor a the view of Architecture as a mode of social regulation. Architecture here refers to any physical or virtual things that consistently constrain certain behaviours while exploring others, they can include physical properties of bodies, properties of computer systems, built architecture, walls doors etc and also law.
Following on from my book Living Lawfully, I look at Exchange, Compassion and Community. Seeing law is a key institution of market societies, I aim to examine the role such emotions as compassion, mercy, hope and love play in exchange and legal institutions in general, as contrasted with the rationalizing features of the market and law. This would involve examining contractual relations and relational theories of contract in the law on a comparative, religious and socio-cultural basis in the context of their public function of promoting mutual, welfare-maximising exchanges. Finally I would look at the types of solidarities and dependencies that these relationships can create, and more specifically and comparatively through their playing out in concrete legal systems. Much of this will involve looking, in general terms, at the relations of Law and Love, especially in the context of post sovereign state architectures for Europe, and in respect of expansion South and East.
I am also engaged in a project on the use of the New Testament parables in legal reasoning which stems from my earlier work on law and love. The aim is to try and combine the two main strands of my research in a work provisionally entitled Parables of Justice: Law from Inside Out.
The Legal Theory web pages contain further information on legal theory at Edinburgh.
I am also working on an AHRC sponsored project 'Beyond Text in Legal Education'
The aim of this book is to explore what it means to live a life under the law. Does a life of law preclude love and does a life of love preclude law? Part of the theme of the book is that social questions also raise individual moral and ethical questions; that to live lawfully implies both a question of how I should live in my relations with my fellows and how society should be organised. These questions must be looked at together. The book explores these questions and in looking at the articulation of law and love touches upon debates in personal morality, aesthetics, epistemology, social and political organisation, institutional design and the form and substance of law. It raises questions that are of interest to students and those working in law, theology, and social and political theory.
It is twenty-five years since the publication of Neil MacCormick's book Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory, a book that has been in print continuously since its first publication. The book was not only a work of Legal Reasoning, but also one on Legal Theory, developing the former through an engagement with the latter, while it also had a strong influence on ethical issues. The focus of the present book is on how looking at legal reasoning can bring up important theoretical and ethical issues, as MacCormick looks at the issues anew in his current work. In this book his views on the Particular and Universal are presented, and subjected to rigorous examination by leading figures in the field.
Zenon BankowskiEpistemology and Ontology: IVR Symposium 2003 (Archiv fur Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie (ARSP). Beiheft ; nr. 102) (Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005)
Born of a series of research seminars, supported by the ESRC and the European Law Journal, this book tackles the most pressing issue raised by intensified European integration: the demise of sovereign states and the design of theoretical frameworks within which issues of post-national democracy and legal legitimacy might be considered. Decoupling "law" from "state", the various contributions raise fundamental questions about the political legitimacy and constitutionality of the European Union's normative order, and begin to develop new structures for the meaningful evaluation of post-statal organization. Still firmly rooted in a liberalized market, but now also concerned with far broader political and social issues, the EU has challenged the traditionally strict demarcation between law, political science and economics. By bringing together all three disciplines to study the legal theory implications of the EU, this book offers its readers a novel methodology: analyzing the constitutionalization of the European legal order with an eye to "real-world" political and economic concerns.
Legalism seen as blind rule following (often embodied inthe metaphor of the "computer judge") is often confused with legality, an altogether more reflexive and rational concept. But legality to work properly needs to be related to and articulated withthe narrower concept of legalism. Only in their complex interaction can we begin to see legality as a mode of organisation appropriateto a free and democratic society. This is discussed here in the context of the computational implementation of legal concepts, an emergingissue in the regulation of cyberspace and other technology enhanced forms of human interaction
Burkhard Schafer, Zenon Bankowski 'Emerging Legal Orders. Formalism and the Theory of Legal Integration' (2003) Ratio Juris Vol 16 pp. 486-505
The argument of this paper is that our lives have meaning because they are structured by rules which are open to the outside, through which the outside can reflexively fold back into the rules so that it can regenerate and transform them. It is this process that constitutes the unity and integrity of our lives and gives them coherence. Our lives do not have certainty in the sense that there is always a definite answer as to how we should live. It is in the reflexive unity of law and love that we have the confidence to respond to the outside and create and transform our narratives, however dangerous that may seem. We might call this “legality” - the ability to go beyond the law at the appropriate time. In this sense then, it is a creative activity and is to be distinguished from legalism, which thinks that following the rules is all that there is. But following the rules is important, for it is only in following them and being faithful to them that we gain the understanding of when to break them. That creativity, which stems from the precarious linking of the arbitrary and the structured, might lead us to think of legality as a form of anarchy - not of the nihilistic variety but of the ability creatively to break the law and thus regenerate it.
Emilios A. Christodoulidis, Zenon Bankowski 'The European Union as an Essentially Contested Project' (1998) European Law Journal Vol 4, Issue 4, pp. 341 - 354
Zenon Bankowski 'Law Love and Computers' (1996) Edinburgh Law Review Vol. 1 (1), pp.25-42
Zenon Bankowski 'How Does it Feel to be on Your Own?: The Person in the Sight of Autopoiesis' (1994) Ratio Juris March 1994
Zenon Bankowski 'Don't Think About It?: Legalism and Legality' (1993) Rechtstheorie Beiheft pp. 45-58
Zenon Bankowski 'Review Article of 'Law, Ideology and Punishment' (Alan Norrie)' (1992) Modern Law Review pp. 876-881
Zenon Bankowski 'The Institution of Law' (1991) Ratio Juris March, pp. 79-85
Zenon Bankowski 'Institutional Legal Positivism' (1989) Rechtstheorie 3: pp. 289-302
Zenon Bankowski 'Law and the Welfare State' (1987) European Yearbook for Sociology of Law pp.301-309
Zenon Bankowski 'Law Left Right Behind' (1984) University of New South Wales Law Review pp.362-376
Zenon Bankowski 'The Value of Truth' (1981) Legal Studies Vol. 1 pp. 257-268
Zenon Bankowski, G. Mungham 'Lay People and Law People in the Administration of the Lower Courts' (1981) International Journal of Law and Sociology pp.85-100
Zenon Bankowski, G. Maher 'Ordinary Language and Judicial Discretion' (1981) Rechtstheorie 12, pp.1-8
Zenon Bankowski, G. Mungham 'A Political Economy of Legal Education' (1978) New Universities Quarterly No. 4 pp.448-463
Zenon Bankowski, G. Mungham 'Law and Lay Participation' (1978) European Yearbook for Sociology of Law pp. 17-31
Zenon Bankowski, G. Mungham 'Distorted Images' (1977) City of London Law Review Autumn pp.53-61
Zenon Bankowski, G. Mungham and P. Young 'Radical Criminology or Radical Criminologist?' (1977) Contemporary Crises Vol. 1, pp. 37-50
Zenon Bankowski 'Beyond Legal Activism' (1977) Law and State No. 3 pp.4-9
Zenon Bankowski 'Anarchy Rules O.K?' (1977) Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie Bd.4 LXIII/3 pp. 327-337
Zenon Bankowski, Geoff Mungham 'Warwick University Limited' (1974) British Journal of Law and Society Vol. 1 179-194
Zenon Bankowski 'Europe In and Out' in K. Nuotio (eds) Europe in Search of Meaning and Purpose (Forum Juris/University of Helsinki, Helsinki, 2003) pp. 21-50
Zenon Bankowski 'Legal Reasoning from the Inside Out' in Tadeusz Biernat, Krzysztof Pa?ecki, Aleksander eczenik, Christoffer Wong and Marek Zirk-Sadowski (eds) Stressing Legal Decisions (Polonia Press, 2003) pp. 27-46
Zenon Bankowski 'Europe and Beyond' in B. Lewandowska Tomaszczyk and Irena Czwenar (eds) A New Curriculum for English Studies (Piotrkow Trybunalski, 2001)
Zenon Bankowski, MacCormick D N 'Legality without Legalism' in Krawietz W, Summers R, Weinberger O, von Wright G (eds) The Reasonable as Rational (Duncker and Humblot, 2000) 181-197
Zenon Bankowski, C. Davis 'Living In and Out of the Law' in Peter Oliver, Victor Tadros and Sionaidh Douglas-Scott (eds) Faith in Law: Essays in Legal Theory (Hart Publishing, 2000)
Zenon Bankowski, Emilios A. Christodoulidis 'Citizenship Bound and Citizenship Unbound' in Kimberly Hutchings and Roland Dannreuther (eds) Cosmopolitan Citizenship (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999) pp.83-104
Zenon Bankowski 'Nie Pozwalam' in Aarnio, Alexy and Bergholtz (eds) Justice, Morality and Solidarity (Jurisforlaget I Lund, Lund, 1997) pp. 53-68
Zenon Bankowski 'Subsidiarity, Sovereignty and Self' in K. Norr and T. Oppermann (eds) Idee und Wirtlichkeit: Zur Reichweite eines. Prinzips in Deutschland und Europa (J C B Mohr, Tubingen, 1997) pp. 23-39
Zenon Bankowski 'Power and the Institution of Law' in Zenon Bankowski, Kaarlo Tuori and Jyrki Uusitalo (eds) Law and Power: Critical and Socio-Legal Essays (Deborah Charles, 1997) pp. 159-173
Zenon Bankowski, D. N. MacCormick, G. Marshall 'Precedent in the UK' in Neil MacCormick, Robert S. Summers (ed) (eds) Interpreting Precedents: A Comparative Study (Dartmouth, 1997) pp.315-355
Zenon Bankowski, D. N. MacCormick, L. Morawski, A. Ruiz Miguel 'Rationales for Precedent' in Neil MacCormick, Robert S. Summers (ed) (eds) Interpreting Precedents: A Comparative Study (Dartmouth, 1997) pp.481-503
Zenon Bankowski, K. Tuori, J. Uusitalo 'Power and the Institution of Law' in Zenon Bankowski, Kaarlo Tuori and Jyrki Uusitalo (eds) Law and Power: Critical and Socio-Legal Essays (Deborah Charles, 1997) pp.159-173
Zenon Bankowski 'Social Justice and Democracy' in R. Bellamy (eds) Theories and Concepts of Politics (Manchester University Press, 1993) pp. 77-97
Zenon Bankowski, Neil MacCormick, R.S. Summers and J. Wroblewski 'On Method and Methodology' in Neil MacCormick, R.S. Summers (eds) Interpreting Statutes: A Comparative Study (Dartmouth Press, 1991) pp. 9-28
Zenon Bankowski, Neil MacCormick 'Statutory Interpretation in the UK' in Neil MacCormick, R.S. Summers (eds) Interpreting Statutes: A Comparative Study (Dartmouth Press, 1991) pp. 359-406
Zenon Bankowski 'Ambiguities of the Rule of Law' in H. Jung (eds) Issues of Law and Morality (Forum Verlag, 1991) pp. 101-112
Zenon Bankowski 'Some Principles of Statutory Interpretation' in J. van Dunne (eds) Legal Reasoning and Statutory Interpretation (Youda Quint, Arnhem, 1989) pp. 41-53
Zenon Bankowski 'La Science de la Legislation en Angleterre' in P. Amselek (eds) La science de la legislation (Presses universitaires de France, Paris, 1989)
Zenon Bankowski 'The Jury and Rationality' in P. Duff and M. Findlay (eds) The Jury Under Attack (Butterworths, Australia, 1988) pp. 8-26
Zenon Bankowski 'Speech Acts, Legal Institutions and Real Laws' in Neil MacCormick, Peter Birks (eds) The Legal Mind: Essays for Tony Honore (Oxford University Press, 1986) pp.121-135
Zenon Bankowski, Neil MacCormick 'La Theorie des actes de langage et la theorie des actes juridiques' in P. Amselek (eds) Theorie des actes de langage, ethique et droit (P.U.F., Paris, 1986) pp.196-204
Zenon Bankowski 'Anarchism, Marxism and the Critique of Law' in D. Sugarman (eds) Legality, Ideology and the State (Academic Press (London), 1983) pp.267-291
Zenon Bankowski, D. Nelken 'Discretion as a Social Problem' in S. Asquith and M. Adler (eds) Discretion and Welfare (Heinemann, 1981) pp. 247-269
Zenon Bankowski 'Political Trials in Contemporary Wales' in Zenon Bankowski, Geoff Mungham (eds) Essays in Law and Society (Routledge, 1980) pp. 53-71
Zenon Bankowski, G. Mungham 'Introduction' in Zenon Bankowski, Geoff Mungham (eds) Essays in Law and Society (Routledge, 1980) pp. 1-7
Zenon Bankowski 'Commissioning Legal Services' (1981) Scots Law Times Feb. 1981, pp. 37-42
Zenon Bankowski, J. Macmanus 'Lay Justice: Some Preliminary Considerations' (1980) SCOLAG Legal Journal pp. 80-83
Papers and Presentations
Zenon Bankowski 'Law Love and Legality' presented at Seminar at University of Santiago, Chile, 2002
Zenon Bankowski 'Normatividade E Direito' presented at A series of Lectures in the Post-Graduate Programme at the Federal University of Rio Grande dol Sul, Porto Allegre, Brazil, 2002
Zenon Bankowski 'Parabes, A'nalogy and Common Law Reasoning' Europe and Beyond', 'Computers and the Law'' presented at Fresco Lectures at University of Genova, 2002
Zenon Bankowski 'Integration through Private Law' presented at Seminar at University of Santiago, Chile, 2002
Zenon Bankowski 'A Europe of Neighbours' presented at Seminar on 'Building Bridges' at Helsinki, 2002
Zenon Bankowski 'I feel Your Pain' presented at Worshop on Simone Weil and Social Justice, 2002
Zenon Bankowski 'Antigone and the Rule of Law' presented at Seminar at University of Silesia, 2002
Zenon Bankowski 'Prawo i Milosierzdie' presented at Seminar at the University of Poznan, 2002
Zenon Bankowski 'Remorse and Reconciliation' presented at Law and Reconciliation Workshop, Edinburgh, 2002
Zenon Bankowski 'Images of Images of Law' presented at Edinburgh Law School Workshop, 2001
Zenon Bankowski 'Bringing the Outside In' presented at ESRC Research Seminar on 'Critical Boundaries' at Leeds University, 2001
Zenon Bankowski 'Legal Reasoning from the outside In' presented at Colloquium on Stressing Judicial Decision, Lund, 2001
Grants Awarded
Awarded £2,500 by None for project 'An Introduction to the Scholarship and Public Life of the late Sir Neil MacCormick', from 01/05/2011 to 31/08/2011
with Professor Burkhard Schafer awarded £728,500 by SHEFC for project 'Centre for Forensic Statistics and Legal Reasoning', from 01/10/2001 to 30/09/2004
Synopsis