We live in a morally flawed world. Our lives are complicated by what other people do, and by the harms that flow from our social, economic and political institutions. Our relations as individuals to these collective harms constitute the domain of complicity. This book examines the relationship between collective responsibility and individual guilt. It presents a rigorous philosophical account of the nature of our relations to the social groups in which we participate, and uses that account in a discussion of (...) contemporary moral theory. Christopher Kutz shows that the two prevailing theories of moral philosophy, Kantianism and consequentialism, both have difficulties resolving problems of complicity. He then argues for a richer theory of accountability in which any real understanding of collective action not only allows but demands individual responsibility. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that for various reasons there must be psychological laws governing beliefs and desires. One of the few serious examples that they offer is the _belief-desire law_, which states, roughly, that _ceteris paribus_ people do what they believe will satisfy their desires. This paper argues that, in fact, there is no such law. In particular, decision theory does not support the contention that there is such a law.

Natural Law Today gives a strong voice to classical natural law theory as the best answers to the fundamental questions of ethics and as the best framework for political and social life. It explains various aspects of that theory and defends it against common misperceptions and criticisms.

A interlocution containing a stimulating lead essay on the relationship between law and violence by one of the key third-generation Frankfurt School philosophers, Christoph Menke, and engaged responses by a variety of influential critics.

The central question in political philosophy is whether political states have the right to coerce their constituents and whether citizens have a moral duty to obey the commands of their state. In this 2005 book, Christopher Heath Wellman and A. John Simmons defend opposing answers to this question. Wellman bases his argument on samaritan obligations to perform easy rescues, arguing that each of us has a moral duty to obey the law as his or her fair share of the (...) communal samaritan chore of rescuing our compatriots from the perils of the state of nature. Simmons counters that this, and all other attempts to explain our duty to obey the law, fail. He defends a position of philosophical anarchism, the view that no existing state is legitimate and that there is no strong moral presumption in favor of obedience to, or compliance with, any existing state. (shrink)

The philosopher Kant is a key thinker in shaping our contemporary concept of morality, freedom, and happiness. This book argues that Kant believes in God, but that he is not a Christian, and that this opens up an important and neglected dimension of Western Philosophy.

Most contemporary legal philosophers tend to take force to be an accessory to the law. According to this prevalent view the law primarily consists of a series of demands made on us; force, conversely, comes into play only when these demands fail to be satisfied. This book claims that this model should be jettisoned in favour of a radically different one: according to the proposed view, force is not an accessory to the law but rather its attribute. The law is (...) not simply a set of rules incidentally guaranteed by force, but it should be understood as essentially rules about force. The book explores in detail the nature of this claim and develops its corollaries. It then provides an overview of the contemporary jurisprudential debates relating to force and violence, and defends its claims against well-known counter-arguments by Hart, Raz and others. This book offers an innovative insight into the concept of Pure Theory. In contrast to what was claimed by Hans Kelsen, the most eminent contributor to this theory, the author argues that the core insight of the Pure Theory is not to be found in the concept of a basic norm, or in the supposed absence of a conceptual relation between law and morality, but rather in the fundamental and comprehensive reformulation of how to model the functioning of the law intended as an ordering of force and violence. (shrink)

This article explores the nature and role of legal powers in private law. I show how powers are special in that they allow agents to change their (and others’) legal circumstances merely by communicating an intention to do so, without having also to change the nonnormative facts of the world. This feature of powers is, I argue, particularly salient in private law, with its correlative or bipolar normative structure; understanding powers and their role in private law thus requires careful attention (...) to this correlativity. In the final section, I argue that the correct explanation of a variety of substantive problems in private law, many having to do with the role of a party's intention, turns on correctly understanding legal powers. (shrink)

Criminal law exceptionalism, or so I suggest, has turned into an ideology in German and Continental criminal law theory. It rests on interrelated claims about the (ideal or real) extraordinary qualities and properties of the criminal law and has led to exceptional doctrines in constitutional criminal law and criminal law theory. It prima facie paradoxically perpetuates and conserves the criminal law, and all too often leads to ideological thoughtlessness, which may blind us to the dark sides of criminal laws in (...) action. (shrink)

Originally published in 1972, Should Trees Have Standing? was a rallying point for the then burgeoning environmental movement, launching a worldwide debate on the basic nature of legal rights that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, in the 35th anniversary edition of this remarkably influential book, Christopher D. Stone updates his original thesis and explores the impact his ideas have had on the courts, the academy, and society as a whole. At the heart of the book is an eminently (...) sensible, legally sound, and compelling argument that the environment should be granted legal rights. For the new edition, Stone explores a variety of recent cases and current events--and related topics such as climate change and protecting the oceans--providing a thoughtful survey of the past and an insightful glimpse at the future of the environmental movement. This enduring work continues to serve as the definitive statement as to why trees, oceans, animals, and the environment as a whole should be bestowed with legal rights, so that the voiceless elements in nature are protected for future generations. (shrink)

Against the traditional reading of Cynic cosmopolitanism, this essay advances the thesis that Diogenes’ world citizenship is a positive claim supported by philosophical argument and philosophical example. Evidence in favor of this thesis is a new interpretation of Diogenes’ syllogistic argument concerning law (nomos) (D.L. 6.72). Important to the argument are an understanding of Diogenes’ philanthropic character and his moral imperative to ‘re-stamp the currency’. Whereas Socrates understands his care as attached specially to Athens, Diogenes’ philosophical mission and form of (...) care attach not to his native Sinope but to all humanity. An important result is that Diogenes’ Cynicism provides an ancient example of cosmopolitanism that is philanthropic, minimalistic, experimental, and utopian. (shrink)

Long understudied, Plato's Laws has been the object of renewed attention in the past decade and is now considered to be his major work of political philosophy besides the Republic. In his last dialogue, Plato returns to the project of describing the foundation of a just city and sketches in considerable detail its constitution, laws and other social institutions. Written by leading Platonists, the essays in this volume cover a wide range of topics central for understanding the Laws, such as (...) the aim of the Laws as a whole, the ethical psychology of the Laws, especially its views of pleasure and non-rational motivations, and whether and, if so, how the strict law code of the Laws can encourage genuine virtue. They make an important contribution to ongoing debates and will open up fresh lines of inquiry for further research. (shrink)

An adequate account of laws should satisfy at least five desiderata: it should provide a unified account of laws and chances, it should yield plausible relations between laws and chances, it should vindicate numerical chance assignments, it should accommodate dynamical and non-dynamical chances, and it should accommodate a plausible range of nomic possibilities. No extant account of laws satisfies these desiderata. This paper presents a non-Humean account of laws, the Nomic Likelihood Account, that does.

The present study tests a gestalt explanation for the gambler's fallacy which posits that runs in random events will be expected to reverse only when the run is open or ongoing. This is contrasted with the law of small numbers explanation suggesting that people expect random outcomes to balance out generally. Sixty-one university students placed hypothetical guesses and bets on a series of coin tosses. Either heads or tails were dominant . In a closed run condition the run ended prior (...) to the critical trial , and in an open run condition the run remained open . As hypothesised, participants showed the gambler's fallacy in the open run condition, but not in the closed run condition. This difference is not due to differential memory for the outcomes. Men, and people with more previous experience gambling, were also found to be more prone to the gambler's fallacy. It is argued that the gestalt explanation best explains the results. (shrink)

La doctrine classique de la Common Law est la cible de nombreuses critiques de la part de Hobbes et de Bentham. Tous deux remettent en cause les principes qui fondent et justifient cette composante fondamentale du droit anglais. Sont notamment visés le caractère coutumier qui lui est attribué, sa prétendue rationalité ainsi que l’interprétation qu’en font les juges. Moment décisif dans l’histoire des théories du droit, cette controverse tend à faire prévaloir l’idée d’un droit créé par un acte de volonté (...) sur un droit non écrit, tiré de la coutume, que les juges s’efforcent d’appliquer et de perpétuer. Mais, au-delà de leur portée critique, les textes de Hobbes et Bentham présentent des divergences qui font apparaître deux conceptions distinctes de la Common Law et de la décision judiciaire. (shrink)

Medical ethics is normally taught in a combination of three ways: through discussions of normative theories and principles; through for-and-against debating of topics; or through case studies. I want to argue that a fourth approach might be better, and should be used more: teaching medical ethics through medical law. Medical law is already deeply imbued with ethical concepts, principles and reasons, and allows the discussion of ethics through the “back door,” as it were. The two greatest advantages of the law (...) are its familiar authority, especially among the disengaged medical students who have little interest or respect for the subject of ethics; and its focus on the reality of the people and the tragedies discussed. Finally, I argue that medical law, unlike ethics, allows more efficient and more detailed MCQ assessment. (shrink)

Heuristics make decisions not only fast and frugally, but often nearly as well as “full” rationality or even better. Using such heuristics should therefore meet health care standards under liability law. But an independent court often has little chance to verify the necessary information. And judgments based on heuristics might appear to have little legitimacy, given the widespread belief in formal rationality.

It is now commonplace in many jurisdictions for judges to refer to the decisions of the courts of foreign jurisdictions when interpreting domestic human rights guarantees. But there has also been a persistent undercurrent of scepticism about this trend, and the emergence of a growing debate about its appropriateness. This issue is of particular relevance in jurisdictions that have relatively recently incorporated human rights provisions that are significantly judicially enforced. In the UK, a reconsideration of the use of comparative judicial (...) decisions in human rights cases is therefore particularly timely. The interpretation of the Human Rights Act 1998 will bring with it the issue of how far British courts will (and/or should) use jurisprudence from other countries in order to help in arriving at decisions on the interpretation of the Act. This article raises for debate, therefore, the meaning and significance of national judges» citation of judgments from other jurisdictions as part of their reasoning in cases with a significant human (or constitutional) rights aspect. Several questions are identified and explored in an attempt to consider various aspects of the general phenomenon. These include empirical questions (how far does it happen, and where?), jurisprudential questions (can we identify criteria that help explain why it does or does not happen?), and normative questions (is it legitimate?). A review of the existing literature is undertaken with a view to determining how far scholars have succeeded in answering these questions. The article concludes that significant gaps exist in our understanding of the phenomenon and raises for discussion the methodologies that may be appropriate for addressing the phenomenon in the future. (shrink)

In Rights Forfeiture and Punishment, Christopher Heath Wellman argues that those who seek to defend the moral permissibility of punishment should shift their focus from general justifying aims to moral side constraints. On Wellman's view, punishment is permissible just in case the wrongdoer has forfeited her right against punishment.

This book presents an answer to the question of why modern legal institutions and the idea of citizenship are important for leading a free life. The majority of views in political and legal philosophy regard the law merely as a useful instrument, employed to render our lives more secure and to enable us to engage in cooperate activities more efficiently. The view developed here defends a non-instrumentalist alternative of why the law matters. It identifies the law as a constitutive feature (...) of our identities as citizens of modern states. The constitutivist argument rests on the (Kantian) assumption that a person's practical identity (its normative self-conception as an agent) is the result of its actions. The law co-constitutes these identities because it maintains the external conditions that are necessary for the actions performed under its authority. Modern legal institutions provide these external prerequisites for achieving a high degree of individual self-constitution and freedom. Only public principles can establish our status as individuals who pursue their life plans and actions as a matter of right and not because others contingently happen to let us do so. The book thereby provides resources for a reply to anarchist challenges to the necessity of legal ordering. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Criminal Law: An Introduction explores the central concepts of criminal law, such as intention, complicity, duress, and how they work, both within criminal law practice and in our everyday lives, from legal and philosophical perspectives. At the heart of the book is the central philosophical concept of responsibility: what does it mean to be responsible for an act, to hold someone responsible for an act, or to give an excuse in order to avoid responsibility for an act? (...) Offering talking points to enrich an ongoing conversation, this unique textbook addresses all of these questions in an accessible way for law and non-law students alike. Real cases are examined in detail and a critical approach to the criminal law is adopted throughout. The focus will be mainly on the criminal law of England and Wales, with occasional cases from other jurisdictions, and occasional examples from other areas of law This text will be ideal reading for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of law, philosophy and criminology, as well as political science and sociology. (shrink)

This paper considers an instance of Ancient Germanic Law in order to open up a new perspective on understanding the nature and functioning of our modern law. The paper claims, along Kelsenian lines, that the law should be understood as an organisation of force and an interpretation of violence. The law orders society by schematising interpretation. The law orders society not by demanding or prohibiting action, but by allowing a certain interpretation of states of affairs, ultimately, the interpretation of violence (...) as legally irrelevant. Ultimately, the law creates peace by interpretation: by allowing us to interpret certain forms of violence as legally irrelevant, the law monopolises force and creates a coercive order that pacifies the land. (shrink)

This paper illustrates how an experimental discovery can prompt the search for a theoretical explanation and also how obtaining such an explanation can provide heuristic benefits for further experimental discoveries. The case considered begins with the discovery of Poiseuille’s law for steady fluid flow through pipes. The law was originally supported by careful experiments, and was only later explained through a derivation from the more basic Navier–Stokes equations. However, this derivation employed a controversial boundary condition and also relied on a (...) contentious approach to viscosity. By comparing two editions of Lamb’s famous Hydrodynamics textbook, I argue that explanatory considerations were central to Lamb’s claims about this sort of fluid flow. In addition, I argue that this treatment of Poiseuille’s law played a heuristic role in Reynolds’ treatment of turbulent flows, where Poiseuille’s law fails to apply. (shrink)

Judges in multiple US states, such as New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, California, and Florida, receive a prediction of defendants’ recidivism risk, generated by the COMPAS algorithm. If judges act on these predictions, they implicitly delegate normative decisions to proprietary software, even beyond the previously documented race and age biases. Using the ProPublica dataset, we demonstrate that COMPAS predictions favor jailing over release. COMPAS is biased against defendants. We show that this bias can largely be removed. Our proposed correction increases overall (...) accuracy, and attenuates anti-black and anti-young bias. However, it also slightly increases the risk that defendants are released who commit a new crime before tried. We argue that this normative decision should not be buried in the code. The tradeoff between the interests of innocent defendants and of future victims should not only be made transparent. The algorithm should be changed such that the legislator and the courts do make this choice. (shrink)

One of the distinctions that Plato in the Laws stresses most heavily in his discussion of the proper relation between the individual citizen and the laws of the city is that between persuasion and compulsion. Law, Plato believes, should try to persuade rather than compel the citizens. Near the end of the fourth book of the Laws, the Athenian Stranger, Plato's spokesman in this dialogue, asks whether the lawgiver for their new city of Magnesia should in making laws ‘explain straightaway (...) what must and must not be done, add the threat of a penalty, and turn to another law, without adding a single bit of encouragement or persuasion [παραμυθας δ κα πειθος … ν] to his legislative edicts’ . A few lines later, the Athenian Stranger himself condemns such a procedure as ‘the worse and more savage alternative’ . The better method is for the laws themselves to try to persuade the citizens to act in the manner that they prescribe. And as a means of doing this, Plato proposes attaching preludes to particular laws and to the legal code as a whole: such preludes will supplement the sanctions attached to the laws and will aim at persuading the citizens to act in the way that the laws direct for reasons other than fear of the penalties attached to the law. Such a practice, Plato believes, is an innovation: it is something that no lawgiver has ever thought of doing before . And we have no reason to think that Plato is here excluding his earlier self, e.g. the Plato of the Republic and the Politicus, from this criticism. (shrink)

Aristotle’s Metaphysics Λ.7 features an argumentative progression from the unwavering actuality of the unmoved mover through its necessity to its goodness, which goodness in turn grounds the manner in which it serves as the ultimate principle of motion, namely, by being an object of love and desire (1072b4-12). One link in this progression is especially brief and startling, namely the second of two inferences in this short sentence: “It is a being of necessity, therefore, and in so far as [it (...) exists] necessarily, [it exists] finely, and it is in this way a principle” (1072b10-11). Aristotle slides smoothly from: x exists necessarily (ex anagkēs) to x exists finely (kalōs), without any intervening step. The seamless speed of this step is bound to give us pause—we naturally read it as enthymematic and start casting about for an intervening premise set. Still more arresting is its apparent move from a descriptive to a normative proposition. From our post-Humean vantage point we may be likely to presume that whatever the missing premise set of this inference turns out to be, somewhere buried in that set will need to be something of the form: if descriptive proposition (DP), then normative proposition (NP). Otherwise, Aristotle’s conclusion will have illicitly inferred a normative proposition from a descriptive premise set, in violation of the Humean edict that one cannot infer an ought from an is. Yet, if we smuggle the norm into our premise set along the way, we have merely relocated our problem. For then we will have asserted, or assumed, that the truth of some descriptive proposition is sufficient for the truth of some normative proposition, namely the consequent of the conditional: if DP, then NP. At any rate, this obtains unless necessity itself is already a normative notion, a questionable assumption, but one we will consider in due course. In either case, though, we need some explication of the route Aristotle follows when he moves, without comment, from necessity to goodness. (shrink)

This article explores the duality of law with regard to the LGBTQ+ community, examining both its historical regulation of non-heteronormative genders and sexualities and its contradictory potential to transcend such regulations over time. Situated within a postcolonial analytical framework, it undertakes a thematic overview and narrative appraisal of research materials, drawn from a diverse array of social science disciplinary intersections, spanning the timeline from 1990 to 2022, that expounds on the intricate and overlapping imbrications between law and the LGBTQ+ community (...) in India. It was observed that the extant academic deliberations on the subject are dispersed across disciplinary boundaries within the larger scope of humanities and social sciences, necessitating an integrative approach. By delving into the historical antecedents of the subject matter, the current findings are situated within four domains, namely: i) the colonial nexus; ii) the postcolonial public redress; and iii) other domains of sustained legal contestation, such as healthcare, workplace, media censorship, and the fraught terrain of identity and legal lexicon. (shrink)

Punishment and democracy appear to exacerbate each other’s worst features. The institutions and moral intuitions used to punish those that break the law can hollow out civic participation, distort the electorate, and undermine core democratic values. Likewise, many have argued the decentralized character of democracy is a key, albeit indirect, cause of increasingly punitive public policies that are divorced from any reasonable penological purpose. Given the effects of electoral politics, many have called for the separation, or general insulation, of state (...) punishment from public influence. However, recent empirical work on punitive attitudes and institutional design has begun to chip away at this common sense. This article contextualizes and qualifies the various mechanisms of policy feedback and public opinion formation thought by political theorists to undermine democratic participation in penal institutions and makes a normative case that insulating the public from penal law actively sustains injustice. (shrink)

One of the motivations for Salmon's (1984) causal theory of explanation was the explanatory irrelevance exhibited by many arguments conforming to Hempel's covering-law models of explanation. However, the nexus of causal processes and interactions characterized by Salmon is not rich enough to supply the necessary conception of explanatory relevance. Salmon's (1994) revised theory, which is briefly criticized on independent grounds, fares no better. There is some possibility that the two-tiered structure of explanation described by Salmon (1984) may be pressed into (...) service, but more work would have to be done. Ironically, Salmon's difficulties are similar to those suffered by his seventeenth-century predecessors. (shrink)