Position

Olaf Tans works as legal philosopher and political scientist at the Department of Social Sciences of Amsterdam University College (AUC). He is also an associated researcher of the VU-based Centre for the Politics of Transnational Law (CePTL).

 

Research

In the last few years he has focused on the following lines of research:

 

1.      Foundationalism and anti-foundationalism in political and legal theory. 

2.      Evolution of law and morality in practical discourse. 

3.      Phenomenology of citizenship. 

4.      The use of fiction and role-play in public deliberation. 

5.      The Social Construction of Normativity in Transnational Legal Discourse (embedded in CePTL).

 

His approach to these topics draws mainly from discourse theory, linguistic philosophy, the study of practical reason, aesthetics and critical (legal) thought, as employed by thinkers such as Habermas, Foucault, Arendt, Nussbaum, Walton, Toulmin, Legendre, Rancière and Derrida. 

 

Teaching

At AUC Tans has developed and teaches the courses Legal & Social Philosophy and Law & Society. His approach is strongly interdisciplinary, interactive, and yet structured. Earlier in his career he has taught courses about e.g. public law, governance, general jurisprudence, and philosophy of international law.  

 

Career

Tans studied law and political science at the University of Groningen. He holds a PhD in Governance Studies from Twente University, based on a thesis entitled The Constitutional Theatre: Contribution to a Discourse Theory of Constitutionalism. Later he has been a postdoc at the law faculty of the UvA, contributing to a NWO-funded research program about democracy in the European Union with a book entitled National Parliaments and European Democracy, a bottum-up approach to European Constitutionalism. Before joining AUC, he has been an assistant professor in legal philosophy at the Free University of Amsterdam.

 

Key Publications

 

2015  'Imagined Constitutionality: Rethinking Democratic Citizenship with the Aid of Fiction Theory', Law, Culture and the Humanities, doi:10.1177/1743872115579025. 

 

2014  ‘Staging Law’s Existence. Using Pretense Theory to Explain the Fiction of Legal Validity’ (accepted by Ratio Juris).

 

2014  ‘The Imaginary Foundation of Legal Systems - A Mimetic Perspective’, Law & Literature 26:2, 127-143. 

 

2012  ‘Parlementaire controle op Europese Besluitvorming,’ Tijdschrift voor Constitutioneel Recht 4:3, 256-265.

 

2012  ‘Recht en Burgerschap: een verkenning van modaliteiten. Inleiding bij een symposiumnummer’, Recht der Werkelijkheid 33:1, 5-19.

 

2011  ‘Het ideaal van een machtsvrij discours. Over Jürgen Habermas, het communicatief paradigma, en rechtvaardigheid in mediation’, Tijdschrift Conflicthantering.

 

2011  ‘Een bal voor de burger. De preambule als medium voor deliberatief burgerschap’, Tijdschrift voor Constitutioneel Recht 2:2, 122-129.

 

2009  ‘De fictie van de constitutie. Over de maatschappelijke functie van ontwerp-denken’, Recht der Werkelijkheid 30:1, 12-26.

 

2009  ‘De moraal van het juridisch verhaal. Hoe Ronald Dworkin samenhang ziet in een lappendeken’, Filosofie 19:5. 

 

2009  ‘Sein en Sollen in Juridisch Discours. Over dat andere uitgangspunt van het rechtspositivisme,’ in: O. Tans et al., De Grenzen van het Goede Leven (Nijmegen, Ars Aequi).

 

2007  ‘Deliberating European constitutional norms – an analysis of arguments’, in: J.R. Carracedo (ed.), Political Philosophy, special issue of Archiv Für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie, 213-226.       

 

2007  ‘National Parliaments and European Democracy - In Search of Common Ground’, in: O. Tans, C. Zoethout, J. Peters (eds.), National Parliaments and European Democracy. A Bottum-up Approach to European Constitutionalism, 3-21.

 

2007  ‘The Dutch Parliament and the EU - A Constitutional Analysis’, in: O. Tans, C. Zoethout, J. Peters (eds.), National Parliaments and European Democracy. A Bottum-up Approach to European Constitutionalism, 163-182.

 

2007  ‘National Parliaments and the EU - Coping with the Limits of Democracy’, in: O. Tans, C. Zoethout, J. Peters (eds.), National Parliaments and European Democracy. A Bottum-up Approach to European Constitutionalism, 225-249.

 

2006  ‘The fluidity of warrants. Using the Toulmin model to analyse practical discourse’, in: D. Hitchcock & B. Verheij (eds.), Arguing on the Toulmin model: New essays on argument analysis and evaluation (Dordrecht: Springer), 219-230.

 

2004  ‘De discursieve constructie van recht. Bijdrage aan een evolutietheorie van juridische kennis’, in: Recht der Werkelijkheid 19, 43-57.

 

2003  Het Constitutionele Theater. Bijdrage aan een discourstheorie van het constitutionalisme (phd-thesis, Amsterdam, Thela Thesis, 2003).

 

2002  ‘The Constitutional Theatre’, in: Res Publica. A Journal of Legal and Social Philosophy 8:3, 231-248.

 

2001  ‘Op zoek naar het virtuele. Over het verband tussen de institutionele rechtstheorie en het constructivisme’, in: M.A. Heldeweg, R.J.P. Schobben, W.G. Werner (red.), De Regel Meester, Opstellen voor Dick W.P. Ruiter (Enschede: Twente University Press), 221-232. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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