Efforts to protect endangered species by regulating the use of privately owned lands are routinely resisted by appeal to the private property rights of landowners. Recently, the 'wise-use' movement has emerged as a primary representative of these landowners' claims. In addressing the issues raised by the wise-use movement and others like them, legal scholars and philosophers have typically examined the scope of private property rights and the extent to which these rights should influence public policy decisions when weighed against other (...) moral considerations. Whether from an anthropocentric standpoint or from a perspective of moral extensionism, the key question seems to be the extent to which prima facie property rights are overridden by other moral interests, not whether such rights claims can reasonably be appealed to at all in public discussions of environmental justice. I argue, however, that a morally extensionist perspective not only introduces more potential defeaters of prima facie property rights, but actually strips appeals to private property rights of their moral significance. Hence, I argue on Rawlsian grounds that appealing to private property rights in the way that the wise-use movement does is unreasonable in a pluralistic society. In so doing, I show that a Rawlsian perspective may be more congenial to the interests of moral extensionists than is typically thought. (shrink)

virgilee's smile brightens the gloaming, some sunlight penetrates the low-lying clouds, but a persistent mist hides merchants from one another. She sweeps her arm around this eerie scene and conjures up the attraction of the Market. So many people learned about business here, their kids are now in business all over the City. You're free here; everybody is doing their own thing at their own pace. Folks working here want to be successful. At work you go by the other guys' (...) rules, you're free here for a few hours, like being out in the woods, you can come in the middle of the week and it's private here and people don't notice you, it's therapeutic like being in an oasis. You meet so many people it really is the melting... (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive moral theory of privatization in war. It examines the kind of wars that private actors might wage separate from the state and the kind of wars that private actors might wage as functionaries of the state. The first type of war serves to probe the _ad bellum_ question of whether private actors can justifiably authorize war, while the second type of war serves to probe the _in bello_ question of whether private actors can justifiably (...) participate in war. The cases that drive the analysis are drawn from the rich and complicated history of private military action, stretching back centuries to the Italian city-states whose mercenaries were reviled by Machiavelli. The book also takes up the hypothetical examples conjured by philosophers—the private protective agencies of Robert Nozick’s _Anarchy, State, and Utopia_, for example, and the private armies of Thomas More’s _Utopia_. The aim of this book is to propose a theory of privatization that retains currency not only in assessing current military engagements, but past and future ones as well. In doing so, it also raises a set of important questions about the very enterprise of war. This book will be of much interest to students of ethics, political philosophy, military studies, international relations, war and conflict studies, and security studies. (shrink)

This study was designed to survey the extent to which private companies in Sweden take structural measures within the field of business ethics: Codes of Ethics; Ethics Committees; Ethics Officers and Ethics Training. This was done in two steps. Through a nation-wide telephone survey, a population of "active" companies were identified. These companies received a questionnaire with detailed questions regarding the design, usage and effects of these measures. The percentage of active companies were found to be a high 46%. National (...) and industry characteristics are proposed as explanatory factors. (shrink)

The demarcation of the private and public life leads to role of the state in private life. Many individuals have been the unflinching voice for moral dissent. In the western philosophy, debate on private morality and public life was instigated by Attorney General’s Commission Report which was submitted in 1986 and recommended no blanket ban on homosexuality and prostitution. However, a contemporary liberalist, Ronald Dworkin, castigates this Report. He argues that the report has an antagonistic approach because of its (...) permissive attitude towards pornography and the same time hospitability towards the enforcement hypothesis, which holds a preventive attitude towards pornography. In this paper, I analyse the feminists’ discourse of pornography connected with Dworkin and the Committee Report and adds more possibilities that put Dworkin’s arguments closer to the Report. Therefore, in this paper, I argue that Commission Report and Dworkin’s strategy towards pornography embodying as two sides of the same coin, and enforcement strategy is in the far away footing implies antagonistic approach. (shrink)

In a society dominated by Confucian ethics, a spirit of Confucian public morality can be seen in the Confucian debate over publicness and privateness, but it is usually activated in circumstances of large ethical crisis. Confucian theory mainly uses ethical relationships to create self and social identities, causing problems of identification in the public life and hindering the expression of moral feelings and actions, thus revealing a weakness in public morality. This is a space that Confucianism has not (...) yet been able to cover, and also where it has room for growth. (shrink)

My aim is to consider how private philanthropy – and that of foundations specifically – can better serve its social purposes. What I have to say may strike professionals in the field as naive. Admittedly my perspective is limited, for I have sat only on the grantee side of the desk. But I have also often tried to put myself into the grantor's frame of mind. The impressions gained in that way have been confirmed and modified by numerous recent conversations (...) in preparation for this paper. The heads of foundations with whom I talked, the board members, and program officers, all were warmly forthcoming, forgiving of my naivete, and very helpful. I hope that what may be construed as criticism in what I have to say will not be taken as betrayal of those good offices. I mean it as support and encouragement of the positive intent I found in every instance. When I accepted the invitation to write a paper on moral values and philanthropy, I first reflected on my own experience. I have often been troubled by my own moral standards in dealing with foundations. In nearly every instance, the proposals that I have written have contained an element of exaggeration – a heightening of the importance of the project I was proposing and of the capacity of my institution to carry it out. My end-of-grant follow-up reports have almost always contained exaggerated claims for the project's success. This inflation was not done consciously. It was a tendency learned early in my career from reading other proposals and participating in committees designing projects to be proposed. (shrink)

EVER SINCE PLOTINUS SOUGHT CLARITY in the notion of privation to dispel our human perplexity about evil, philosophers have debated whether this concept is adequate to the task. The intensity and scope of evil in the twentieth century—which has seen the horrors of world war and genocide—have added fuel to the debate. Can the idea of a falling away from the good, however refined, come anywhere close to capturing the calculation, the commitment, the energy, and the drive that underlie the (...) most virulent projects in malfeasance? While the privation account might appear a reasonable strategy for explaining passive wrongdoing—indifference to people in grave need, or cooperation with injustice—the more active and dynamic forms of evil would nevertheless seem to elude its conceptual net. (shrink)

On a traditional account, God causes sinful acts and their properties, insofar as they are real, but God does not cause sin, since only the sinner causes the privations in virtue of which such acts are sinful. After explicating this privation solution, I defend it against two objections: (1) that God would cause the sinful act’s privation simply by causing the act and its positive features; and (2) that there is no principled way to deny that God causes the privation (...) yet still affirm that the sinner causes it. I close by considering a limitation of the privation solution. (shrink)

How far can we apply the same moral principles to both public and private behaviour. In the interests of effective political action, are we right to accept acts of deceit, exploitation or force which we would regard as unacceptable in private relations with individuals? What means can be properly adopted in the promotion of great public causes? The problem of 'dirty hands' in politics was posed most strikingly by Machiavelli. It has re-emerged this century in a pressing and, to some (...) extent, a new form, in connection with the two World Wars and more recently the Vietnam War, where the political decisions and the destruction, and risks of destruction, have been of a scale and character not previously experienced. The contributors, including Bernard Williams, Thomas Nagel, T. M. Scanlon, and Ronald Dworkin, examine the background to this problem in moral and political theory. (shrink)

One of the central arguments against redistribution through private law is its inefficiency due to the double-distortion phenomenon that accompanies it. I argue that in a subset of cases—in which there is uncertainty regarding the fairness principle that should be accepted in the realm of private law—it may be required to take into account redistributive considerations even if one generally accepts the double-distortion argument. I assert that while side-constraints may apply to direct redistribution, they do not apply to the role (...) of redistributive considerations in determining which of the fairness principles should be accepted in the realm of private law. As a consequence, some distributive patterns could be achieved only by taking into account redistributive considerations in the realm of private law. I argue that redistributive considerations may tilt the scales toward accepting the fairness principle with the lower credence of being true. (shrink)

In this chapter we address what we call “The-Everybody-Did-It” (TEDI) Syndrome, a symptom for collective negligence. Our main thesis is that the character of scientific communities can be evaluated morally and be found wanting in terms of moral responsibility. Even an epistemically successful scientific community can be morally responsible for consequences that were unforeseen by it and its members and that follow from policy advice given by its individual members. We motivate our account by a critical discussion of a recent (...) proposal by Heather Douglas. We offer three, related criticisms of Douglas’s account. First, she assumes that scientific fields are communicative communities. Second, in a system where the scientific community autonomously sets standards, there is a danger of self-affirming reasoning. Third, she ignores that the character of a scientific community is subject to moral evaluation. We argue that these omissions in Douglas’s theory leave it with no adequate response to TEDI Syndrome. Moreover, we deny that science ought to be characterized by unanimity of belief among its competent practitioners, this leads easily to the vices of close-mindedness and expert-overconfidence. If a scientific community wishes to avoid these vices it should create conditions for an active pluralism when it and its members aspire to the position of rational policy decision-making. (shrink)

Suppose that there are good or morally defensible reasons for not responding truthfully to a question or request for information. Is a lie or a deception better as a means to avoid telling the truth? There are many situations in public and private life in which the answer to this question would serve as a useful moral guide, for instance, clinical situations involving dying patients, educational situations involving young children and personal situations involving close friends. Intuitively, we feel that there (...) is a moral asymmetry in favor of deceiving over lying. However, doubts have been cast on such intuition. The aim of this paper is to bolster this intuition. It will be argued that the claim of moral asymmetry in favor of deception can be supported on a consideration of the different degrees of expectation involved in communicative ethics. Two other objections to the claim of asymmetry will also be considered. (shrink)

The contributions to this edited volume engage with John Gardner's philosophical work on private law. The content is divided into three parts. The first part gathers contributions on general theoretical issues that bear upon private law. The second part is concerned with Gardner's well-known views on responding to wrongs and the justification of reparative duties - an issue that spans all of private law. The third part turns to theoretical issues within particular areas of private law. Its focus is Gardner's (...) focus: tort law, but it also includes chapters on contract law and equity. The primary aim of Private Law and Practical Reason is to facilitate a critical assessment of the private law thinking of one of the most important legal philosophers of the last fifty years. Gardner's contributions to private law theory are recognised to be amongst the most significant and philosophically rich. This work assembles a group of contributors with diverse theoretical commitments, many of whom have not directly engaged previously with Gardner's work, and is intended to act as a reference point for central debates in private law theory, such as the role of moral duties, the justification of reparative obligations, and, more broadly, the role of reasons in private law. (shrink)

This essay draws on comparative ethnographic material from Albania and Italy. It addresses different forms of corruption, arguing that in order to understand the way in which phenomena such as corruption occur and are experienced in any given society, we should contextualize them in the historical and cultural traditions of that specific society. In doing so, however, we should be alert in avoiding falling into the trap of either moral relativism or cultural determinism. The essay suggests that an anthropological analysis (...) of corruption should distinguish between legal rules and social norms. In particular, the empirical study of such norms helps to understand the meanings—both individual and inter-subjective—that actors give to the social and political situation in which they operate. (shrink)

It’s natural to think of acts of solidarity as being public acts that aim at good outcomes, particularly at social change. I argue that not all acts of solidarity fit this mold - acts of what I call ‘private solidarity’ are not public and do not aim at producing social change. After describing paradigmatic cases of private solidarity, I defend an account of why such acts are themselves morally virtuous and what role they can have in moral development.

This article is part of a symposium on property-owning democracy. In A Theory of Justice John Rawls argued that people in a just society would have rights to some forms of personal property, whatever the best way to organise the economy. Without being explicit about it, he also seems to have believed that protection for at least some forms of privacy are included in the Basic Liberties, to which all are entitled. Thus, Rawls assumes that people are entitled to form (...) families, as well as personal associations which reflect their tastes as well as their beliefs and interests. He seems also to have assumed that people are entitled to seclude themselves, as well as to associate with others, and to keep some of their beliefs, knowledge, feelings and ideas to themselves, rather than having to share them with others. So, thinking of privacy as an amalgam of claims to seclusion, solitude, anonymity and intimate association, we can say that Rawls appears to include at least some forms of privacy in his account of the liberties protected by the first principle of justice. -/- However, Rawls did not say very much about how he understands people’s claims to privacy, or how those claims relate to his ideas about property-ownership. This is unfortunate, because two familiar objections to privacy seem particularly pertinent to his conception of the basic liberties. The first was articulated with customary panache by Judith Thomson, in a famous article on the moral right to privacy, in which she argued that talk of a moral right to privacy is confused and confusing, because privacy rights are really just property rights in disguise. The second objection has long been a staple of leftist politics, and is that the association of privacy with private property means that privacy rights are just a mask for coercive and exploitative relationships, and therefore at odds with democratic freedom, equality and solidarity. If the first objection implies that Rawls is wrong to think that protection for privacy can be distinguished from protection of personal property, the second objection implies that Rawls cannot hope to protect privacy without thereby committing himself to the grossest forms of capitalist inequality. -/- In this paper I will not discuss Rawls’ views of property-owning democracy. However, by clarifying the relationship between claims to privacy and claims to property-ownership, I hope to illuminate some of the conceptual, moral and political issues raised by Rawls’ ideas, and by work on the concept of a property-owning democracy, which he inspired. As we will see, privacy-based justifications of private ownership are not always unappealing, and privacy is sometimes promoted, rather than threatened, by collective ownership. The conclusion draws out the significance of these claims for the idea of a property-owning democracy. (shrink)

This paper explores a problem for Michael McKenna’s conversation model of moral responsibility that views blame as characteristically part of a conversational exchange. The problem for this model on which this paper focuses is the problem of private blame. Sometimes when we blame we do so without any intention to engage in a communicative exchange. It is argued that McKenna’s model cannot adequately account for private blame.

R. S. Downie; IX—Can there be a Private Morality?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 68, Issue 1, 1 June 1968, Pages 167–186, https://doi.org/10.1.

A private property right is a collection of particular rights that relate to the control of an object. The ground for such moral rights rests on the value of project pursuit. It does so because the individual ownership of particular objects is intimately related to the formation and application of a coherent set of projects that are the major parts of a self-shaped life. Problems arise in explaining how unowned property is appropriated. Unilateral acts with regard to an object, e.g., (...) mixing in one’s labor into it, probably don’t ground particular rights to private property. Nor do bilateral contracts since a stable pre-institutional contract with regard to appropriation is not likely to form. However, a conventional method of appropriation can allow for such appropriation while at the same time preserving the pre-institutional nature of such rights. This theory can also account for a person’s property rights in her own body. However, the value of project formation requires that persons have at least some private property that is to serve as the object of their projects. These positive rights to property undermine the libertarian claim that all non-commitment-based rights are negative. However, a further empirical argument is needed in order to justify protecting these positive moral rights to private property by positive legal rights. (shrink)

Many of the reasons offered for outsourcing security involve costs and benefits – a consequentialist way of reasoning. Thus, I will explore a consequentialist argument against the use of private security contractors (PSCs) in counterinsurgencies. Discussing the benefits and costs of employing PSCs in these kinds of operations will demonstrate that the hiring of PSCs in many cases (perhaps in most) is consequentially unsound. More precisely, the overall negative consequences of hiring PSCs during counterinsurgencies should preclude their use unless in (...) extreme emergencies. Defenders of the use of PSCs readily point to their financial benefits and expected increase in efficiency as the starting point for their argumentation. On my account, if the benefits really do outweigh the foreseeable and expected costs, then hiring PSCs may, in that case, be a morally viable option. However, I contend that, unless we institute broad contractual control and oversight reform, unless we truly understand the costs and benefits, we should have a standing, prima facie prohibition against employing PSCs in counterinsurgencies. (shrink)

Financiamento de Pesquisa: CNPq Moral e Direito: uma relação peculiar Resumo: O objetivo deste artigo é defender a existência de uma relação peculiar pluridirecional entre a moral e o direito, bem como defender que a moralidade é melhor compreendida por sua autoridade normativa em segunda pessoa, especificamente nos casos que envolvem reivindicações de justiça. Para tal finalidade, inicio esclarecendo as características centrais da moralidade, ressaltando a sua natureza e autoridade normativa intersubjetiva. Posteriormente, investigo duas reivindicações de justiça, a saber, a (...) injustiça epistêmica e a desobediência civil. Na conclusão, sugiro uma distinção entre moralidade privada e pública, argumentando que isto pode nos ajudar a compreender melhor a relação pluridirecional que existe entre a moral e o direito. Palavras-chave: Normatividade; Ponto de vista de segunda pessoa; Injustiça epistêmica; Desobediência civil; Moralidade privada e pública. Morals and Law: a peculiar relationship Abstract: The main aim of this paper is to defend the existence of a peculiar pluridirectional relationship between morals and law, as well as to defend that morality is better understood by its normative authority in second person, specifically in cases involving claims of justice. To this end, I begin by clarifying the central characteristics of morality, highlighting its nature and its normative authority that is intersubjective. Subsequently, I investigate two claims of justice, namely, epistemic injustice and civil disobedience. In conclusion, I suggest a distinction between private and public morality, arguing that this can help us to better understand that there is a pluridirectional relationship between morals and law. Key-words: Normativity; Second-person standpoint; Epistemic injustice; Civil disobedience; Public and private morality. Moral y Derecho: una relación peculiar Resumen: El objetivo principal de este trabajo es defender la existencia de una peculiar relación pluridireccional entre moral y derecho, así como defender que la moral se entiende mejor por su autoridad normativa en segunda persona, específicamente en los casos de pretensiones de justicia. Para ello, comienzo por aclarar las características centrales de la moral, destacando su naturaleza y su autoridad normativa que es intersubjetiva. Posteriormente, investigo dos reclamos de justicia, a saber, la injusticia epistémica y la desobediencia civil. En conclusión, sugiero una distinción entre moralidad privada y pública, argumentando que esto puede ayudarnos a comprender mejor que existe una relación pluridireccional entre moral y derecho. Palabras clave: Normatividad; Perspectiva en segunda persona; Injusticia epistémica; Desobediencia civil; Moral pública y privada. Data de registro: 17/02/2021 Data de aceite: 05/07/2021. (shrink)

Surrogacy involves a private agreement whereby a woman who gestates a child attempts to surrender her (putative) moral right to become the parent of that child such that another person (or persons), of the woman’s choice, can acquire it. Since people lack the normative power to privately transfer custody, attempts to do so are illegitimate, and the law should reflect this fact.

The publication in 1957 of the Wolfenden Report occasioned a celebrated controversy in which profound theoretical issues concerning the relation between law and morality, and the legal enforcement of morality were discussed. The principal disputants were Lord Justice Devlin and Professor H. L. A. Hart. It is by now well known that the main recommendation of the Wolfenden Report was the reform of the criminal law so that homosexual behaviour in private between consenting male adults should no longer (...) be a criminal offence. As homosexual behaviour in Christendom was at the outset punishable in the ecclesiastical courts, and subsequently, with the demise of the ecclesiastical courts, in the secular courts, the Wolfenden recommendation on homosexuality marked a major departure from the prevailing state of affairs in which the precepts of Christian morality, especially relating to sexual morals, were at first enforced by the ecclesiastical courts, and then by the secular courts. (shrink)

Public law adjudication has grown dramatically in recent decades in many English-speaking countries. In the United States, and increasingly in other countries where it used to be rare for public questions to be decided in court, controversial questions of public policy are tried as constitutional or human rights issues and decided by court order. But in other areas of law - in everyday tort, contract, and property cases - court decisions are typically much less dramatic and seldom if ever announce (...) controversial innovations in public policy. Yet in private law cases too there are implicit questions of social justice.In common law countries, perhaps not surprisingly, tort, contract, and other private law cases are often decided on common law principles. Common law has a style and ethos of its own. It is based on precedent and, although precedent is open to modification, the common law style is anything but radical. With roots in the nineteenth century and earlier, common law often reflects classically liberal ideas, more or less consciously and more or less robustly.Instead of approaching private law cases with a common law mindset, should judges not treat these cases the way they might treat public law cases? Should courts not promote a vision of justice and human rights through private law adjudication, just as they sometimes - and in many countries increasingly - do in notable public law decisions?This article suggests several reasons why they should not. Turning private law more public in such a way would have considerable costs in legal stability, transparency, legitimacy, and judicial habits of neutrality and impartiality. Each of these considerations in turn is associated with what is generally thought of as the Rule of Law. The classically liberal ideas in the common law bloodstream themselves have at least some association with political freedom and the Rule of Law. And even if one is sceptical about classical liberalism and enthusiastic about today's public law, one might consider that public acceptance of ambitious public law adjudication may depend at least in part on the credit that courts build up through morally and politically unambitious day-to-day common law adjudication. (shrink)

The Tragedy of the Commons The population prohlem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality. ...

In contrast to the vast literature on retributive theories of punishment, discussions of private revenge are rare in moral philosophy. This paper reviews some examples, from both classical and recent writers, finding uncertainty and equivocation over the ethical significance of acts of revenge, and in particular over their possible resemblances, in motive, purpose or justification, to acts of lawful punishment. A key problem for the coherence of our ethical conception of revenge is the consideration that certain acts of revenge may (...) be just (at least in the minimal sense that the victim of revenge has no grounds for complaint against the revenger) and yet be generally agreed to be morally wrong. The challenge of explaining adequately why private revenge is morally wrong poses particular difficulty for purely retributive theories of punishment, since without invoking consequentialist reasons it does not seem possible adequately to motivate an objection to just and proportionate acts of revenge. (shrink)

How can anyone be opposed to private philanthropy? Such philanthropy consists in persons freely giving of their wealth or other goods to benefit individuals and groups they consider worthy of support. As private persons, they act apart from – although not, of course, in contravention of – the political apparatus of the state. In acting in this beneficent way, the philanthropists are indeed, as their name etymologically implies, lovers of humanity; and their efforts are also justified as exercises of their (...) right to freedom, including the free use of the resources they own, which they have presumably acquired by their own free efforts or by the efforts of other persons who have freely transferred these resources to them. Thus, private philanthropy combines two of the highest values of individual and social morality: personal freedom and interpersonal beneficence. I. Moral Problems of Private Philanthropy Many questions about moral, and especially human, rights arise from private philanthropy as thus briefly characterized. These questions may be divided into three sets, which focus respectively on the agents of philanthropy, on the recipients of philanthropy, and on the objects for which philanthropic awards are given. First, regarding the agents: Do they have a right to all the wealth they possess? Have they accumulated this wealth in a way that has respected the moral rights of other persons? If the answer is negative, even in part, then in what morally valid sense is all the wealth in question theirs to give away, even if they use it for philanthropic purposes: Do they have a right to give it away as they choose? (shrink)

Over the past twenty years, Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) have become significant elements of national security arrangements, assuming many of the functions that have traditionally been undertaken by state armies. Given the centrality of control over the use of coercive force to the functioning and identity of the modern state, and to international order, these developments clearly are of great practical and conceptual interest. This edited volume provides an interdisciplinary overview of PMSCs: what they are, why they have (...) emerged in their current form, how they operate, their current and likely future military, political, social and economic impact, and the moral and legal constraints that do and should apply to their operation. The book focuses firstly upon normative issues raised by the development of PMSCs, and then upon state regulation and policy towards PMSCs, examining finally the impact of PMSCs on civil-military relations. It takes an innovative approach, bringing theory and empirical research into mutually illuminating contact. Includes contributions from experts in IR, political theory, international and corporate law, and economics, and also breaks important new ground by including philosophical discussions of PMSCs. (shrink)

According to Joseph Heath, privatizations should be judged on a case-by-case basis with appeal to the Pareto criterion. This approach, or so I argue, amounts to a depoliticization of privatization. While Heath’s approach is effective and at times illuminating, I show that a consistent application of his methodology is self-defeating in that it eventually requires a politicization of privatization. With appeal to transaction cost theory, I show there are social costs associated with affirming the competitive pressures of the (...) market. Subsequently, I argue that while private actors may, according to Heath, pursue efficiency with appeal to an adversarial morality, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are much more constrained in how they may achieve such gains. Due to the pressures of liberal neutrality, SOEs may chase efficiency only without setting actors back. Conversely, the private sector’s potential for success is predicated on its ability to compete for Kaldor-Hicks efficiency, which specifically allows for win-lose interactions. While SOEs are often no more able than the private sector to achieve Pareto optima, this discrepancy makes it so that SOEs produce gains that are ex-ante lower but more equal, whereas the private sector produces gains that are ex-ante higher but more unequal. Thus, the social cost of affirming the competitive pressures of the market is ex-ante inequality. If this premise is accepted, there is no way to avoid the conclusion that a consistent case-by-case approach requires a structural, political view on how privatizations affect the state’s ex-post Pareto-enhancing abilities. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Is a Political Pluralism Ethically Neutral? The ‘Veil of Ignorance’ The Moral Basis of Agreement Trust ‘Fair Play’.

Private law as an open legal order: understanding contract and tort as interactional law This article puts forward the claim that private law, and especially contract and tort, is the area of law that most clearly shows how law depends on social interactions. Taking its cue from Lon Fuller, interactional law is presented as a form of law that depends on informal social practices. Using tort and contract cases, it is argued that this implies that law is in open connection (...) to moral norms and values, and that law cannot be understood without taking into account people’s everyday reciprocal expectancies. (shrink)

Our erises of energy and of social values are eausally interrelated. Our energy problems have contributed substantially to our contemporary value problems, as evident, for example, by the institution of the private automobile, whieh has begun to erode the very values it initially served. That our energy erisis has resulted from problems of value is illustrated by setting up a simple model of producer-consumerinteraetion, with egoism and hedonism as dominant prineiples of duty and of good respeetively, and by showing that (...) an energy crisis like the one we are currently experieneing is practically inevitable. These discussions lead to an assessment of the possible roles moral philosophy might play in confronting these two crises. (shrink)

Developments in both Convention jurisprudence and the English courts since the passing of the Human Rights Act 1998 have significantly extended the reach of article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and thus the powers of the judges who administer that broadly-defined provision. Those developments include confirmation that article 8 operates horizontally between private citizens as well as in public law; extension of article 8 to issues of personal autonomy as well as to more narrowly understood issues of (...) privacy; increased emphasis on (judicially determined) proportionality and fair balance; and softening of the criteria for the engagement of article 8 in the first place. The English courts at the highest level have recognized that these developments require them to make decisions on issues of social or even moral priority, extending as far as critical scrutiny of criminal practice and sentencing. Recent cases in the House of Lords such as Countryside Alliance and R v G demonstrate a significant level of disagreement as to how those powers should be exercised, with the result that the outcome of future article 8 cases may depend on the judges’ personality and view of social priorities. (shrink)

Very little of the expanding debate over private policing has employed the language of human rights. This is notable not just because private policing is a distinctly global phenomenon, and human rights have become, as Michael Ignatieff puts it, “the lingua franca of global moral thought.” It is notable as well because a parallel development that seems in many ways related to the spread of private policing—the escalating importance of private military companies—has been debated as a matter of human rights. (...) This Article asks whether discussions of private policing have been impoverished by their failure to employ the language of human rights. It begins by discussing the dramatic rise, over the past several decades, in the size and significance of private policing. It then summarizes the academic and public policy debates about that development and considers what, if anything, the language of human rights could add to those debates, and whether the addition would be welcome. One strand of the Article compares the debate over private policing with the debate over private military companies. Another strand compares private policing with private prisons, in light of the recent ruling by the Supreme Court of Israel declaring private prisons unconstitutional. The Article concludes that the benefits of introducing the language of human rights into debates about private policing are far from clear—with one exception. Human rights, particularly as codified in international treaties, do seem a promising way to get traction on a particular aspect of police privatization that has received less attention than it deserves: the way in which widespread reliance on private security firms may weaken public commitment to providing everyone with a minimally acceptable degree of protection against private violence. (shrink)

THIS ESSAY EXAMINES GLOBAL WATER PRIVATIZATION EFFORTS IN LIGHT of the environmental teachings of both Islam and Christianity, proposing that although environmental ethics is more developed within Christianity, Islam offers more ethical sources for thinking about water due to the arid climate in which Islam developed. Furthermore, this essay advocates full-cost pricing as necessary to attain closed loop water recycling, maintains that full-cost pricing does not further disadvantage the poor, and argues that full-cost pricing more easily fits Muslim and (...) Christian moral imperatives than present water policies do. (shrink)

Waging war for money has been frowned upon since the Peace of Westphalia and the rise of the modern nation-state. The stigma associated with private warfare translates, in legal terms, into a prohibition on mercenary activity and denying mercenaries the protection afforded to regular combatants . Noting the apparent similarities between mercenaries and private military contractors, some have sought to extend to the latter the restrictive regime applicable to the former. But the resemblance between these two types of actors should (...) not imply that private warfare, in its modern form, is condemnable outright. This Article argues that an inclusive approach to military outsourcing—drawing upon historical, legal and moral perspectives—is necessary to contend with the challenges raised by the growth of the private military industry. I examine the connection between history , morality , and law , to show that private warfare deserves a more nuanced and pragmatic treatment under international law. (shrink)

Background When conducting qualitative research, participants usually share lots of personal and private information with the researcher. As researchers, we must preserve participants’ identity and confidentiality of the data. Objective To critically analyze an ethical conflict encountered regarding confidentiality when doing qualitative research. Research design Case study. Findings and discussion one of the participants in a study aiming to explain the meaning of living with HIV verbalized his imminent intention to commit suicide because of stigma of other social problems arising (...) from living with HIV. Given the life-threatening situation, the commitment related to not disclosing the participant’s identity and/or the content of the interview had to be broken. To avoid or prevent suicide, the therapist in charge of the case was properly informed about the participant’s intentions. One important question arises from this case: was it ethically appropriate to break the confidentiality commitment? Conclusion confidentiality could be broken if a life-threatening event is identified during data collection and participants must know that. This has to be clearly stated in the informed consent form. (shrink)

Han Fei was a central figure in Chinese Legalism, which was a leading school of thought in the Warring States period of China, and which left a huge imprint on political culture in imperial China. This article examines the complex duality of public and private interests in Han Fei’s political thought, a crucial aspect of his thinking. I argue that Han Fei adopted a sophisticated statist approach to understanding public and private interests. For Han Fei, public interests are embodied in (...) the state while private ones have dual functions. On the one hand, private interests threaten public ones by inviting corrupt material interests, personal morality, and knowledge, as well as human relationships. On the other hand, self-centered human psychology plays a dialectic role in strengthening the state. (shrink)

This essay interprets John Locke's teachings about private societies, or free private associations. The essay proceeds by interpreting Locke's mature writings on ethics, politics, and philosophy, and then by illustrating Locke's teachings as they apply to two contemporary problems in associational freedom. Although Locke wrote about private societies primarily in the course of arguing for religious toleration, throughout his mature corpus he develops an internally consistent general theory of associational freedom. At first glance, Locke seems to suggest that all citizens (...) are entitled to associate for any end of their choosing, to control admission into and expulsion from their membership, and to enforce their own internal rules of governance. However, Locke qualifies this broad right to bar societies from organizing around ends inconsistent with the minimal moral and political conditions of liberalism. Ultimately, Locke suggests, citizens deserve a broad right of private society only to the extent that they are well enough formed by their regime and its private institutions to be capable of governing themselves in both private and public life.In contrast with contemporary practice, Locke's justification is broader in some respects and narrower in others. The essay illustrates the implications by considering how Locke's teachings justify limiting the scope of anti-discrimination laws and enlarging the scope of government efforts to dissolve seditious associations. (shrink)

Schools in liberal societies are responsible for producing liberal citizens. However, if they have too robust a view of citizenship, they may find themselves undermining the view of good lives held by many pacific and law abiding groups. Here I argue against treating citizenship as an educational good that simply trumps private values when they conflict and in favor of a view that seeks a context sensitive balance between such conflicting goods. The paper explores Rawls's distinction between two moral powers (...) as a way of understanding the character of some of the private interests in schooling. (shrink)

Mark S. Cladis pinpoints the origins of contemporary notions of the public and private and their relationship to religion in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His thesis cuts across many fields and issues-philosophy of religion, women's studies, democratic theory, modern European history, American culture, social justice, privacy laws, and notions of solitude and community-and wholly reconsiders the political, cultural, and legal nature of modernity in relation to religion. Turning to Rousseau's Garden, its inhabitants, the Solitaires, and the question of restoration (...) and redemption that preoccupied much of Rousseau's thought, Cladis examines how Rousseau addressed the tension between the joys and moral obligations of social engagement and the desire for solitude. He was caught between two possibilities: active involvement in the creation of an enlightened and humane society or extrication from social entanglements in favor of cultivating a spiritual interior life. Yet Rousseau did not view this conflict as a desperate division. Rather, for him it was a moral struggle to be endured by those who had fallen from the Garden. For this edition Cladis has added a substantive introduction that discusses the role of religion in contemporary democratic societies, particularly in American public life. Cladis proposes four models of thinking about religion in public and champions what he calls spiritual democracy-a dynamic, culturally specific, and progressive democracy. Cladis argues that spiritual democracy refers not only to a society's legal codes and principles but also to its democratic culture and symbols and its daily practices and institutions. It encompasses the nation's character, diverse identities, and a distinctivel exchange between the nation's public vision and citizens' complex, private lives. (shrink)

In this short essay I argue that the main insight of Murphy and Nagel’s book, The Myth of Ownership, that people have no right to their pre-tax income, is not supported by their claim that the right to private property is not a natural right. The non-naturalness of the right to private property, I argue, is irrelevant to their moral argument. The plausibility of their moral conclusion derives from the thesis that people have a right to the fruits of their (...) labor, maintaining, however, that there is no possible conception, morally speaking, of what the fruits of one’s labor are, independent of a system of legal and social norms that constitute the terms of fair bargaining, pricing, etc. People can only have a right to a fair assessment of the added value of their labor, and the latter cannot make any sense independent of the entire system of norms prevailing in the relevant society. I argue that this last conclusion is not affected by the nature of the right to private property. (shrink)

In § 37 of his "Elements of First Practical Philosophy", Baumgarten provides important qualifications to the controversial notion of ‘objective morality’, which had long been at the centre of the dispute between realists like Wolff and his adversaries. The chapter shall examine how he construes his view of morality in §§ 36-38 with a specific focus on the central § 37. I shall analyse that section, first considering how Baumgarten understands the key notion of ‘objective morality’ and (...) how he argues for it, focusing both on its relational character and its connection with God’s will. Then I will examine the last, and arguably most surprising of the implications that he draws per negativum from the main claim, namely that affirming objective morality does not amount to rule out what Baumgarten calls ‘subjective morality’. Finally, I will briefly consider how Baumgarten’s distinctive way to take side in the Wolffian camp in that dispute reflects, through the close dialogue with the "Elements" in Kant’s private notes and lectures, on the development of Kant’s own views in practical philosophy. (shrink)

Can the right to private property be claimed as one of the `rights of mankind'? This is the central question of this comprehensive and critical examination of the subject of private property. Jeremy Waldron contrasts two types of arguments about rights: those based on historical entitlement, and those based on the importance of property to freedom. He provides a detailed discussion of the theories of property found in Locke's Second Treatise and Hegel's Philosophy of Right to illustrate this contrast. The (...) book contains original analyses of the concept of ownership, the ideas of rights, and the relation between property and equality. The author's overriding determination throughout is to follow through the arguments and values used to justify private ownership. He finds that the traditional arguments about property yield some surprisingly radical conclusions. (shrink)