Humanistic Logic Theory: Reconciling Legal Certainty and Substantive Justice in Contemporary Legal Reasoning

Authors

  • Aris Prio Agus Santoso
  • Ramlin Ahmad

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.63120/islamiclegalissue.v2i1.106

Keywords:

Humanistic Logic, Legal Justice, Legal System

Abstract

The persistent tension between legal certainty and substantive justice reveals a fundamental limitation in legal reasoning: humanitarian values are often treated as external moral considerations rather than constitutive elements of legal rationality. This study develops Humanistic Logic Theory as a jurisprudential framework integrating logical coherence, legal justification, human dignity, vulnerability, proportionality, and substantive consequences within a unified structure of legal reasoning. Employing normative-conceptual legal research, the study combines conceptual, comparative, and hermeneutic-philosophical approaches to synthesize major traditions of legal thought, including Aristotle, Radbruch, Rawls, Dworkin, Alexy, Sen, and contemporary dignity-based jurisprudence. The analysis formulates four interrelated dimensions: Humanistic Logic, Legal Rationality, Humanity-Based Justice, and Ethical Equilibrium. The findings show that legally valid reasoning remains normatively incomplete when it disregards disproportionate human consequences, while humanitarian considerations require rational and doctrinal justification to avoid arbitrariness. An illustrative humanitarian-legal conflict further demonstrates how the framework makes tensions among legality, vulnerability, institutional responsibility, and substantive justice analytically visible. The principal theoretical contribution lies not in introducing entirely new legal values, but in reconstructing their relationship by positioning humanity as an internal criterion of rational legal justification. The framework also has potential relevance beyond domestic adjudication, particularly for global legal challenges involving human rights, socio-economic inequality, migration, public health, and technology-mediated governance in contemporary plural legal systems. Although its evaluative indicators remain normative-analytical and require empirical and cross-jurisdictional validation, Humanistic Logic Theory offers a transferable architecture for advancing legal reasoning from formal rationality toward human-centered rationality without abandoning legal certainty or the rule of law.

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Published

2026-10-24

How to Cite

Santoso, A. P. A., & Ahmad, R. (2026). Humanistic Logic Theory: Reconciling Legal Certainty and Substantive Justice in Contemporary Legal Reasoning. Contemporary Islamic Law and Legal Issue, 2(1), 26–46. https://doi.org/10.63120/islamiclegalissue.v2i1.106

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