In a provocative essay, philosopher Jeffrie G. Murphy asks: 'what would law be like if we organized it around the value of Christian love, and if we thought about and criticized law in terms of that value?'. This book brings together leading scholars from a variety of disciplines to address that question. Scholars have given surprisingly little attention to assessing how the central Christian ethical category of love - agape - might impact the way we understand law. This book aims (...) to fill that gap by investigating the relationship between agape and law in Scripture, theology, and jurisprudence, as well as applying these insights to contemporary debates in criminal law, tort law, elder law, immigration law, corporate law, intellectual property, and international relations. At a time when the discourse between Christian and other world views is more likely to be filled with hate than love, the implications of agape for law are crucial. (shrink)

Justice in the bible -- Plato's The Republic -- Aristotle's Nicomachean ethics -- Justice in Islamic law -- Saint Thomas Aquinas' summa theologica -- Confucius in china -- The conquest of America -- Machiavelli: "the end justifies the means" -- Jiirgen Habermas' theory of diskursethik -- John Rawls' Justice as fairness -- Ronald Dworkin's Taking rights seriously -- Robert N Ozick's Anarchy, state, and utopia -- Justice as "efficiency" -- Justice and "desert" -- Precedents -- (...) Wojciech sadurski -- Marx's justice as a "critique" -- Alasdair macintyre -- "Feminist" justice. (shrink)

A collection of essays on contemporary issues in justice and law.

In this paper, we argue that the Epicurean genealogy of justice and laws presuppose an analysis of the just as a modality of the useful, an approach that denies the conventional character of justice. This genealogical pattern differentiates the origin of justice from that of the law and refers to friendship as a relevant explanatory factor of the origin of justice. We maintain that the interpretations that underline the incoherence of this reference to friendship, in the (...) framework of a hedonistic theory, presuppose a non-Epicurean sharp distinction between altruism and selfishness. (shrink)

Anscombe argues in “Modern Moral Philosophy” that obligation and moral terms only have meaning in the context of a divine Lawgiver, whereas terms like ‘unjust’ have clear meaning without any such context and, in at least some cases, are incontrovertibly accurate descriptions. Because the context needed for moral-terms to have meaning does not generally obtain in modern moral philosophy, she argues that we should abandon the language of obligation, adopting instead the yet clear and meaningful language of injustice. She argues (...) further that we should develop an account of human flourishing to answer the question why we need to be just. The essay contends that Aquinas has an account of obligation that requires neither a god nor an account of human flourishing, and that proceeds immediately from the common apprehension of justice Anscombe noted. (shrink)

Aus dem Inhalt: Views from the North: Hans Petter Graver: Law, Justice and the State: Nordic Perspectives u Jacob Dahl Rendtorff: The Danish Welfare State: Philosophical Ideals and Systemic Reality u Sigri!Dur *orgeirsdottir: Feminist Ethics and Feminist Politics u Kuellike Lengi: The Situation of Human Rights in Estonia u Einar Palsson: Pythagoras and Early Icelandic Law u Law, Discourse and Rationality: Mats Flodin: Internal and External Rationality of Legal Systems u Logi Gunnarsson: A Discourse About Discourse u Hjordi!s Hakonardottir: (...) Legal Language: A Tool of Justice u Ghita Holmstrom-Hintikka: On the Use of Expert Witness in Legal Reasoning and Inquiry u Law, State and Nation: Agust H. Ing*orsson: Democracy, Bureaucracy and Marginalization of the State u Aleksander Peczenik: Law-State, Legal Certainty and Legitimacy of Law u Ove K. Pedersen/Sverre Raffnsoe: Reorganizing Society u Juha Raikka: Mill on National Sentiment u Pall Skulason: Concepts of the State and Classes of Value u Problems of Law and Rights: Britt-Mari Blegvad: How to Cope With Uncertainty: Trust and Law u Jon Wetlesen: Animal Rights or Human Duties?. (shrink)

Intellectually stimulating articles, which grapple with the tough issues involving morality, justice, and the law. This balanced anthology will be of interest to philosophers, legal scholars, and anyone concerned about the relation of law to morality.

This volume provides different disciplinary and cultural perspectives on the ethical and political ramifications of the incommensurable yet inextricable relationships among law, justice, and power.

This paper intends to analyze how Aristotle develops the argument that connects justice and law; for this task, the books I and II of his Politics will be analyzed, since these texts offer us a more direct understanding of the central issue that will be developed here. Since Aristotle also deals with this fundamental theme in books II and V of the Nicomachean Ethics, visiting important passages of this work will also be necessary. Therefore, the hypothesis to be developed (...) in this brief study focuses on understanding the place of justice and law in the sphere of political life, as well as on the way in which individual virtues fulfill their political purposes in improving the moral character of individuals who practice law of the city, a context of different levels of human self-sufficiency. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging interview Alan Norrie discusses how he became involved with Critical Realism, his work on Dialectical Critical Realism, and responses to it amongst the Critical Realist communi...

Existing theoretical literature on justice, law, and community typically treats them as ideas studying them through an analytical and rational approach. In this article, I propose to investigate these concepts through aesthetic experience as an attempt to both sharpen our imagination of such concepts and demonstrate they are inseparable. I do this by painstakingly examining the movies Shoplifters by Kore-eda and The House That Jack Built by Von Trier. Rather than focusing on thematic analysis, I claim and show that (...) film form is crucial for aesthetic and affective experience. Furthermore, and against the conventional view, I argue that both movies articulate a spatialized vision of justice defined by its materiality. Together these aspects help us to keep (re)imagining law, justice, and community, and grasp better their worldmaking properties and powers. (shrink)

One might legitimately ask what reasons other than vanity could prompt an author to issue a collection of his previously published essays. The best reason, I think, is the belief that the essays hang together in such a way that, as a book, they produce a whole which is in a sense greater than the sum of its parts. When this happens, as I hope it does in the present case, it is because the essays pursue related themes in such (...) a way that, together, they at least form a start toward the development of a systematic theory on the common foundations supporting the particular claims in the particular articles. With respect to this collection, the essays can all be read as particular ways of pursuing the following general pattern of thought: that a commitment to justice and a respect for rights (and not social utility) must be the foundation of any morally acceptable legal order; that a social contractarian model is the best way to illuminate this foundation; that a retributive theory of punish ment is the only theory of punishment resting on such a foundation and thus is the only morally acceptable theory of punishment; that the twentieth century's faddish movement toward a "scientific" or therapeutic response to crime runs grave risks of undermining the foundations of justice and rights on which the legal order ought to rest; and, finally, that the legitimate worry about the tendency of the behavioral sciences to undermine the values of. (shrink)

Global justice is one of the most important subjects in law and political theory today. What principles of justice might tell us about the actual practices of the WTO and other international economic institutions is of vital importance to states and their citizens. This volume reflects the results of a symposium held at Tillar House, the ASIL headquarters in Washington, DC, in November 2008 which brought together philosophers, legal scholars, and economists to discuss the problems of understanding international (...) economic law from the standpoint of rights, justice, and economic efficiency. The book makes advances in developing the normative criterion for ecaluation and justifying the international economic legal order. (shrink)

Early modern natural law and the law of nations has been criticised for the Eurocentric character of its conception of law and justice, which has been in turn linked to its role in providing an ideological justification for European imperialism and colonialism. In questioning this account, the present chapter begins by noting that this historical critique presumes that a non-Eurocentric conception of law and justice was in principle available to the early moderns, which they culpably ignored for ideological (...) reasons. If such a non-Eurocentric conception was not available, though, then we will have to acknowledge that the early modern law of nature and nations was actually far more profoundly Eurocentric than even its most strident postcolonial critics have grasped. If the early modern law of nature and nations turns out to be wholly within the horizon of European cultures and designed to address fundamentally European political and religious problems, then its colonial uses might turn out to be both less central and less culpable than is presumed by postcolonial critique. These are the revisionist questions that the chapter explores. (shrink)

Ronald Dworkin's theory of law forges a close connection between questions about the truth of propositions of law and the question of political obligation: law as integrity is a theory of legal practice that purports to explain, not only how the content of law is determined, but also why the law—in ordinary cases—imposes an obligation of obedience. The theory (as presented) is ultimately incoherent. If we accept Dworkin's theory of the grounds of law we are obliged to reject his claims (...) about its force; alternatively, if we accept his view of the force of law, we must reject his theory about its grounds: he cannot be correct about both force and grounds. Dworkin supposes that, in extraordinary cases, the force of law is cancelled or overridden; but the relevant considerations of justice are wholly internal to our identification of the content of law. Consistently elaborated, integrity denies the offending requirements legal status: lex injusta non est lex. (shrink)

This article considers procedural justice in the law, with specific reference to the adjudicative context of governmental officials applying legal standards to particular cases. We critically survey the three main accounts of procedural justice in the literature: utilitarian, outcome‐based, and dignitarian. Utilitarian and outcome‐based theories share the instrumental view that the only purpose of procedures is to lead to accurate legal outcomes. However, the former are willing to trade off the benefits of accuracy against its costs, whereas the (...) latter hold that procedural rights are necessary to guard against the injustice caused when individuals' legal rights are mistakenly denied. Dignitarian theories maintain that process matters apart from outcomes, because procedures should show respect for individuals' dignity in the Kantian sense of rational agency. We present a new perspective, drawing on relational theory. Relational theory holds that we are social creatures whose self‐identities and sense of self‐respect are bound up with the quality of our relationships with other individuals, groups, and institutions. Our relational account is informed by empirical research in social psychology which has found that people's evaluation of procedures is substantially influenced by relational concerns. (shrink)

Aus dem Inhalt: Justice in General: E. Attwooll: Is the Idea of Justice Asymmetric? u C. L. Sheng: Injustice in Law Caused by Conflict between Equality and Equity u G. Barden: Approaches to Justice: The Economy and the State u C. Schmidt: The Concept of Justice in Economic Theory u M. Milde: Rawls, Pluralism and the Value of Contract Theory u J. Tasioulas: M. Walzer on Justice u L. Cedroni: An Ethological Approach to Law, (...) class='Hi'>Justice and the State uaR. Kevelson: Justice as Artifice and Sign u A. Makolkin: Semiotics and Poeticity of Law and Justice u D. Ginev: Law and Morality from a Hermeneutic-Semiotic Perspective Rights in General: F. Viola: Personal Identity in the Human Rights Perspective u J.-R. Sieckmann: Justice and Rights u P. Comanducci: Justice and Rights u D. Wayand: Aboriginal Rights - Then and Now u M. Pavcnik: Argument der Grundrechte u D. B. Boersema: What's Wrong with Rights? u E. E. Dais: A Kantian Critique of Justice Holmes's Rights Theory Social and Environmental Rights: B. M. Baker: The Welfare State: Objectives, Subordinate Principles and Justifying Grounds u U. Penski: Zur Begruendung und Struktur sozialer Rechte u H. LaFolette: Two Forms of Paternalism u L. J. Mazor: Social Justice / Asocial Injustice u D. Wood: Constitutional Minimalism and the Discretionary Power of the Welfare State u u.a. (shrink)

Along with the exploding attention to globalization, issues of global justice have become central elements in political philosophy. After decades in which debates were dominated by a state-centric paradigm, current debates in political philosophy also address issues of global inequality, global poverty, and the moral foundations of international law. As recent events have demonstrated, these issues also play an important role in the practice of international law. In fields such as peace and security, economic integration, environmental law, and human (...) rights, international lawyers are constantly confronted with questions of global justice and international legitimacy. This special issue contains four papers which address an important element of this emerging debate on cosmopolitan global justice, with much relevance for international law: the principle of sovereign equality, global economic inequality, and environmental law. (shrink)

In this paper I consider Aristotle’s solutions to two questions about justice and the laws: why think that obeying the law is just? And why think that doing what is just will promote one’s happiness? I analyze Aristotle’s solutions to these two problems in terms of four claims concerning the laws that come from Plato and underwrite Aristotle’s optimism about the potential for politikê epistêmê to issue in laws which are objectively correct.

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction A Global Distribution Principle? Problems with Globalizing the Difference Principle Conclusion Notes.

In Quest of Justice: Islamic Law and Forensic Medicine in Modern Egypt. By Khaled Fahmy. Oakland: University of California Press, 2018. Pp. xiii + 377. $39.95.

Ronald Dworkin’s new book, Justice for Hedgehogs, covers an extremely broad range of philosophical issues. However, its central thesis—the ‘unity of value thesis’—is that conflicts between moral or ethical values are merely apparent and that those values are, in fact, integrated and mutually supporting. Dworkin offers several arguments in support of this thesis, but, in this review, I focus on his attempt to illustrate the unity of value thesis by showing that the best account of certain key values reveals (...) them to be integrated and mutually supporting. I contend that this strategy is more promising than one might initially think, but that it breaks down when we consider the relationship between law and justice. For Dworkin, law is a value and his account of law entails that it can conflict with justice. Moreover, he seems precluded from developing an alternative account of law that does not give rise to such conflicts. However, while these conclusions weaken Dworkin’s case for the unity of value thesis, they do not suffice to refute it. (shrink)

One issue of contention amongst scholars of the Republic is whether Thrasymachus initially espouses a conventionalist account of justice, according to which just actions are merely those which are lawful; required, or at least allowed, by the laws passed by the ruler of the state. A further question is then whether his initial conceptions of rulers and laws are positivist ones, such that to be a ruler or law of a state is simply determined by the state’s constitution. At (...) 340c Thrasymachus effectively rejects such positivism by placing a condition on being a ruler that one should be exercising the art of ruling and on being a law that it should work to the ruler’s interest. Some have maintained that this works to clarify his initial account and so shows that he was never a positivist about rulers and laws. In this paper I argue against such an understanding of Thrasymachus’ argument and explore the problems which beset the position he is, on my reading, forced into by Socrates’ objection to his opening claim that justice is what is in the interest of the stronger and the argument he first gives to support it. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that tort law is, or ought to be understood as, a system of personal responsibility and corrective justice. Moreover, it is often assumed that these notions are identical, or at least compatible. In fact, however, personal responsibility and corrective justice are very different concepts and they produce very different pictures of the law. The article demonstrates this by comparing the way in which personal responsibility and corrective justice deal with three important problems: the (...) presence of non-subjective standards in the law, the place of liability insurance, and the relationship between law and politics. (shrink)

Xenophon’s anecdote concerning the exchange of clothes between a big boy and a little boy in Cyropaedia offers a valuable framework for understanding his conception of justice and the problematics of administering it. Interpreters have erred by assuming that Cyrus’ teacher, as well as Socrates in Memorabilia, simply identifies the just with the lawful. Rather than identifying the two, both characters argue that the law is just; but they differ widely in their explanations of what makes the law just. (...) For Cyrus’ teacher, the obligation to observe the law rests on a universal pre-legal ban on violence; for Socrates statutory law is to be obeyed for utilitarian reasons. Socrates’ view thus justifies both the teacher’s insistence that Cyrus obey the law—since the law is of benefit to the community—and also Cyrus’ decision to violate the law to achieve a just and beneficial redistribution. But it offers no justification for a universal ban on violence. In conformity with the Socratic principle, Cyrus avoids violence as far as possible, but only for the prudential reasons expressed by his mother. Once he acquires the power to coerce, Cyrus uses it to enforce the principle of proportional equality and meritorious redistribution he had approved in his judgment of the actions of the big boy. (shrink)

This paper explores two ideas in Aristotle: the idea that a just person is necessarily a lawful and law-abiding citizen, and second, the idea that the virtuous person necessarily cares about the common good. In this paper, I show that justice and its concern for the common good is central to Aristotle’s conception of the virtuous agent, and that justice, in turn, cannot be understood apart from the various laws that states devise for the common benefit.

Justice and Power in the Sociolegal Studies asks what interdisciplinary work in the law and society tradition tells us about the relationship of law and justice, as well as the way power operates in and through law. The fundamental concepts of justice and power provide points of departure for leading scholars to explore the various domains of socio-legal research. As they note the explicitness of the engagement with issues of power and the relative silence about -- or (...) indirectness in taking on -- questions of justice found in most law and society research, they ask how engagement with issues of power and silence about justice constituted law and society as a research field caught between a desire to have political impact and, at the same time, to maintain its scientific respectability. (shrink)

For centuries, international trade has been seen as essential to the wealth and power of nations. More recently we have started to understand its problematic role as an engine of distributive justice. In this compelling book Frank J. Garcia proposes a new way to evaluate, construct and manage international trade - one that is based on norms of economic justice, comparative advantage and national interest. Garcia examines three ways to conceptualize the problem of trade and global justice, (...) drawn from Rawlsian liberalism, communitarianism and consent theory. These approaches illustrate specific issues of importance to the way global justice has been theorized, offering a pluralistic mode of arguing for global justice and highlighting the unique modes of discourse we employ when engaging with global justice and their implications for conceptualizing and arguing the problem. Garcia suggests a new direction for trade agreements built around truly consensual trade negotiations and the kind of international economic system they would structure. (shrink)

This book is a critical examination of John Rawls's account of the normative grounds of international law, arguing that Rawls unjustifiably treats groups - rather than particular persons - as foundational to his model of international justice.

The contribution focuses on philosophical issues of justice of positive law in the light of the social teaching of John Paul II. The analyses start with consideration of anthropological foundations of justice as virtue, develop with the reflexion upon justice of actions realizing justice and finally arrive at examination of the criteria of justice of law. -/- It is argued that relations between a human being and goods (ends of actions) form ontological basis of natural (...) law and justice of actions – orders and prohibitions are secondary in respect to these relations. An aim of just law (and natural law) is not preservation or restoration of abstractly understood moral order based on norms – orders and prohibitions) but integral development (good) of a person – a being possessing dignity. John Paul’s II philosophy of law takes advantage primarily of Thomas Aquinas’ approach to law and combines it with constructions which are typical for modern human rights protection. John Paul’s II conception of natural law is anthropocentric and bases on subjective rights thinking. Human dignity and human rights which derive from it provide basic criteria for the justice of law. Human rights as subjective rights disclose natural law which is understood as a set of goods for a human person. These goods are ends of actions and as such they determine actions and their forms. This point of view is compatible with Aquinas’ definition: “law is nothing but a rational plan of operation, and … the rational plan of any kind of work is derived from the end” (Summa contra gentiles, lib. 3, cap. 114, n. 5). -/- Positive (human) law which is not just has no normative power in this sense that it does not in itself provide reasons for concrete actions of a concrete actor. Sometimes there are moral reasons for following unjust law, however if its norm prescribes actions which are wrong in themselves (internally wrong) there is moral obligation to act contrary to such a legal norm. -/- Zasadniczym przedmiotem opracowania jest filozoficzna refleksja Jana Pawła II nad sprawiedliwością prawa stanowionego. Analizy przebiegają od zagadnienia antropologicznych podstaw sprawiedliwości poprzez problematykę działań realizujących sprawiedliwość do zagadnienia sprawiedliwości prawa stanowionego. Opracowanie zamykają uwagi wskazujące na kontekst teologiczny istotny dla problematyki sprawiedliwości, którego analiza wykracza jednak poza podjęte zamierzenie koncentrujące się na problematyce filozoficznoprawnej. Argumentuje się, że u podstaw tej refleksji leży namysł nad relacją człowieka do dobra, która stanowi ontologiczną podstawę prawa naturalnego i sprawiedliwości – nakazy i zakazy są wtórne wobec tej relacji. Celem prawa i sprawiedliwości jest dobro konkretnego, obdarzonego godnością człowieka, a nie np. przywracanie abstrakcyjnie pojętego porządku moralnego. Od strony konstrukcji teoretycznej, filozofia prawa Jana Pawła II jest osadzona przede wszystkim na koncepcji Tomasza z Akwinu łączonej z konstrukcjami typowymi dla współczesnej ochrony praw człowieka. To w godności i wynikających z niej prawach człowieka poszukiwać trzeba zasadniczych treściowych kryteriów sprawiedliwości prawa. Prawa człowieka jako prawa podmiotowe są podstawowym wyrazem prawa naturalnego, stanowiącego ontyczną podstawę sprawiedliwości i które pojmowane jest jako zespół dóbr dla osoby, zatem i celów kształtujących działanie. Perspektywa pojmowania prawa naturalnego jest antropocentryczna. Prawo stanowione, które nie jest sprawiedliwe, nie ma „mocy prawa”, przede wszystkim w takim sensie, że nie stanowi samo w sobie racji działania. Niekiedy, ze względów moralnych, niesprawiedliwe prawo wymaga posłuszeństwa. Jeśli jednak prawo stanowione daje uprawnienia do czynów wewnętrznie złych i nakazuje takie czyny, to nie tylko nie obowiązuje w sumieniu i nie jest racją działania, ale obowiązkiem jest postępowanie wbrew takiemu prawu. (shrink)

This article is a response to the Lancet Commission on the Legal Determinants of Health from gendered perspectives and focusing on gender-based violence and abuse. The Lancet Commission sees the role of law as positive, indeed central in providing justice in global contexts, and this contribution explores and unpacks this assertion, drawing on some examples from India and elsewhere. Some feminists have argued that law and justice are incompatible for women, and this is sometimes borne out when we (...) look at legal reforms and interventions in the field of gender-based violence. However, we also explore the ways in which some women have used legal reforms in creative ways to destabilize patriarchal norms, and more broadly, how absence of legal protection can undermine access to rights. We conclude that law can have a symbolic relationship with justice. (shrink)

MORALITY, JUSTICE AND THE LAW is a co-edited volume pulling together selections on theories of the moral underpinnings of law, morality and lawyering (including the religious lawyering movement), civil disobedience, capital punishment and immigration. The book was published by Prometheus Books in 2007.

This text is an integrated and comprehensive account of theories of justice and judgement in contemporary political and moral philosophy. It offers a critical examination of judgement and normative validity in the recent works of Rawls, Habermas, Ackerman, Michaleman, and Dworkin. Ferrara demonstrates how the understanding of justice and normative validity, since the linguistic turn in philosophy, is defined in terms of reflective judgement. This demonstration comprises of an historical overview of the judgement model in contemporary political philosophy (...) that focuses on Rawls on ` justice as fairness' and Habermas on the discourse theory of law and the public sphere. The discussion then examines situated judgement; the work of Ackerman on the function of the constitution; and Michaelman on deliberative democracy. Justice and Judgement concludes with an exhaustive and exacting discussion of universalism and contemporary liberalism; and the judgement view of justice. The key themes of this examination are the good; equal respect; and reflexive judgement. (shrink)

Do states or individuals stand under duties of international justice to people who live elsewhere and to other states? How are we to assess the legitimacy of international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations Security Council? Should we support reforms of international institutions and how should we go about assessing alternative proposals of such reforms? The book brings together leading scholars of public international law, jurisprudence and international relations, political philosophers and political theorists to (...) explore the central notions of international legitimacy and global justice. The essays examine how these notions are related and how understanding the relationships will help us comparatively assess the validity of proposals for the reform of international institutions and public international law. (shrink)

Justice and Christian Ethics is a study in the meaning and foundations of justice in modern society. Written from a theological perspective, its focus is upon the interaction of religion and law in their common pursuit of justice. Consideration is given, first, to the historical roots of justice in the classical tradition of virtue and in the biblical ideas of covenant and the righteousness of God. Subsequent chapters trace the relationships between justice, law and virtue (...) in Puritanism, in Locke, and in the founding documents of the American Republic in the late eighteenth century. In his concluding section, the author develops a covenantal interpretation of justice which includes both law and virtue, both human rights and the common good. Special attention is given to the pluralistic character of modern political societies; to criteria of distributive justice; and to religious resources for the renewal and transformation of justice. (shrink)

Crime, Justice and Human Rights is an introduction to the philosophy, law and politics of human rights, uniquely tailored to criminologists and criminal justice practitioners. Integrating human rights and criminological frameworks across a range of subject areas - from criminalization and state crime, to crime prevention and critical analyses of the operation of the police, courts and penal system - the authors highlight both the potential and the limitations of human rights in informing new directions in criminology. Featuring (...) case material from Europe, North America, Australia and beyond, this critical, multidisciplinary text supports the teaching of human rights across a wide range of criminological topics, and assists students, researchers and independent readers to incorporate human rights paradigms into their criminological analysis. (shrink)