Description: Within limits, the law allows for exceptions. Or so we tend to think. In fact, the line between rules and exceptions is harder to draw than it seems. How are we to determine what counts as an exception and what as part of the relevant rule? The distinction has important practical implications. But legal theorists have found the notion of an exception surprisingly difficult to explain. This is the longstanding jurisprudential problem that this book seeks to solve.
Review Quotes: "Tightly argued and highly valuable...In explaining the intersection of defenses, defeaters, and exceptions in criminal law, in law generally, and for rules generally by use of the idea of the burden of proof, [Duarte] d'Almeida has not only offered a more than plausible solution to the problem he has set out to solve, and has not only done so with admirable rigor, but has also made a substantial contribution to the literature on rules more generally...Deserves to be read and absorbed by anyone interested in deontic logic, artificial intelligence, the operation of legal (and other) rules, and the characteristics of normative systems generally, whether those be the normative systems of law, of games, of etiquette, or even of morality." Frederick Schauer, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews