This is the review of a book by Paula Byrne on Lord Mansfield's great-niece, Dido, whom he raised as his own daughter. Lord Mansfield was the Lord Chief Justice of England in the Eighteenth Century. The child was brought to him as an infant and grew up to become what we would today term his paralegal clerk in his Library at Kenwood House. His great-niece was the child of a black slave and his sister's (...) son, Sir John Lindsay. This is also a narrative of the British Slave trade including some of Lord Mansfield's judgements at the King's Bench Division, Royal Courts of Justice. (shrink)

Dido Belle was the illegitimate daughter of Captain Lindsay, the aristocratic nephew of William Murray, Scottish by birth and Lord Chief Justice of England for many decades. The book tells the story of Dido's life in Lord Mansfield homes, from the time her father begged Lord and Lady Mansfield to be wards of the child Dido to the death at age 88 of Lord Mansfield, mainly cared for by Dido and to Dido's young (...) death at age 43. It also raises issues of financial queries, Wills, Probate, and the place of a woman in society in those days, not quite chattel but not equal to men. (shrink)

Criticising judges : fair game or off-limits? -- Academics and judges -- Are the judges too powerful? -- Magna Carta and compensation culture -- Does judicial review undermine democracy? -- Liability of public authorities in negligence -- The shifting sands of statutory interpretation -- Time to call it a day : some reflections on finality and the law -- The globalisation of law -- Recent developments in commercial law conference -- The contribution of construction cases to the development of the (...) common law -- What is wrong with human rights? -- Human rights in an age of terrorism -- Religion and the law : some current problems -- The extraterritorial application of the European Convention on Human Rights : now on a firmer footing, but is it a sound one? -- Magna Carta--liberties, customs, and the free flow of trade -- Delay too often defeats justice -- Magna Carta and religion -- Runnymede -- Advocates as protectors of the rule of law -- Litigators--survive and thrive -- The Jackson reforms and civil justice -- Sharpening the public gaze : advances in open justice in England and Wales -- Threats to justice in the twenty-first century -- Halsey 10 years on---the decision revisited -- Arbitration versus litigation -- Arbitration after Brussels I reform -- School speech day -- How my classical education has affected my life -- Valedictory -- Changes in the law in the last 50 years. (shrink)

Flesh of My Flesh is a collection of articles by today's most respected scientists, philosophers, bioethicists, theologians, and law professors about whether we should allow human cloning. It includes historical pieces to provide background for the current debate. Religious, philosophical, and legal points of view are all represented.

Australia has recently experienced what many regard as its greatest judicial crisis. The appointment of Timothy Carmody QC as Chief Justice of Queensland in 2014 emerged from a process that was tainted by the state government’s willingness to break confidences gained in the course of consultation for the appointment. Equally, a strongly negative and heterodox reaction to the appointment by the whole Queensland Supreme Court bench meant that, together, politicians and judges brought on a collapse of the traditional (...) ethics surrounding judicial appointments. Nevertheless, the extreme circumstances of the Carmody affair suggest that, where judges have a legitimate concern that a judicial appointment might put a fundamental constitutional value like judicial independence at risk, a court may be justified in publically expressing concern about the appointment. (shrink)

The judicial appointments regime in England and Wales is unbalanced. The pre-2005 appointments regime conferred excessive discretion on the Lord Chancellor, but the post-2005 regime has gone much too far in the opposite direction. Today, the Lord Chancellor is almost entirely excluded from the process of selecting lower level judges and enjoys only limited say over the selection of senior judges. In this article I argue that the current regime places too little weight on the sound reasons (...) for involving the minister in individual selection decisions, including the scope for ministerial input to enhance judicial independence, to supply political leadership on judicial diversity and to render more effective the discharge of the Lord Chancellor’s systemic responsibility for the justice system as a whole. I argue that shortlists reconcile the need to more fully involve the Lord Chancellor whilst at the same time ensuring that candidates satisfy a merit threshold. (shrink)

Alan Hirsch, Instructor in the Humanities and Chair of the Justice and Law Studies program at Williams College, has testified as an expert witness on false confessions in 23 states.In the introduct...

What are things like the Supreme Court? Gabriel Uzquiano has defended that they are groups, entities which are somehow composed of members (at certain times) but which, unlike sets (or pluralities), allow for fluctuation in membership. The main alternative holds that 'the Supreme Court' refers (at any time) to the set (or plurality) of their members (at the time). Uzquiano motivates his view by posing a metaphysical puzzle for this reductive alternative. I argue that a parallel reasoning would also find (...) a corresponding 'puzzle' in the case of singular terms like 'The Chief Supreme Court Justice'. (shrink)

Contrary to the expectations of several theorists belonging to the modernisation school, chieftaincy as a traditional institution survived various political changes throughout the 19th and 20th century in most African states. Nonetheless, their existence thereafter has varied in these states. Some states have lauded, recognised and employed chiefs for state development, while other states have blatantly ignored and designated the offices of chiefs as an obsolete governance institution that has outlived their usefulness. The variance in the disposition to chiefs is (...) identified as deeply rooted in a long-standing debate over the relationship between modernity and tradition. This study explores this debate, adopting the Ghanaian chieftaincy institution in its modern form as a case study. A synthesis of existing literature on the relevant concepts was developed and discussed in the development of the study. The study identified the major debate on tradition and modernity to be situated in a binary school, where one strand believes they can both exist together, and the other situates their argument in the need to abolish tradition completely from modern societies. For the Ghanaian setting, however, the chieftaincy institution is recognised and accorded its autonomy in the 1992 Constitution of Ghana. This has created a bifurcated state where constitutional law and customary law are implemented at the same time. Over the years, the interaction between both systems of governance has been seen mostly in land administration, local governance, and development. Chiefs as such are identified as playing extensive roles in state development and investment promotion through land administration, serving as gatekeepers between the central government and their subjects, promoting solidarity and employing their influence and expertise as a means for introducing sustainable development initiatives in their localities. However, conflicts and land mismanagement have been areas of contention, affecting their influence and relevance in recent times. The study recommends capacity building and further integration with the modern democratic Ghanaian institutions to improve the contribution of chiefs to the development of Ghana and other contexts where they exist. (shrink)

The Metaphysical Society was founded in 1869 at the instigation of James Knowles (editor of the Contemporary Review and then of the Nineteenth Century) with a view to 'collect, arrange, and diffuse Knowledge (whether objective or subjective) of mental and moral phenomena' (first resolution of the society in April 1869). The Society was a private dining and debate club that gathered together a latter-day clerisy. Building on the tradition of the Cambridge Apostles, they elected talented members from across the Victorian (...) intellectual spectrum: Bishops, one Cardinal, philosophers, men of science, literary figures, and politicians. The Society included in its 62 members prominent figures such as T. H. Huxley, William Gladstone, Walter Bagehot, Henry Edward Manning, John Ruskin, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. (shrink)

The title of this issue, Spinoza Today', takes up a question central to Genevieve Lloyd's substantial oeuvre, whether she is writing about feminist philosophy or historical phi- losophers and movements. That is, how do we draw on past philosophers to address contemporary problems, while also doing justice to the context for which they wrote? More particularly, why be interested today in what Spinoza wrote in the seven teenth century? But also: How do we read so as to be attentive (...) to Spinoza's particular concerns, and without subordinating his insights to neat dichotomies that aid the teaching, if not the thinking, of his philosophy? (shrink)

In this article I begin by discussing the persistent problem of relations between educational inequality and the attainment gap in schools. Because benefits accruing from an education are substantial, the ‘gap’ leads to large disparities in the quality of life many young people can expect to experience in the future. Curriculum knowledge has been a focus for debate in England in relation to educational equality for over 40 years. Given the contestation surrounding views about curriculum knowledge and equality I (...) consider the thinking of two philosophers, Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas, and their work on justice, to trouble the curriculum framework and discourse of knowledge promoted through the policy text of The Importance of Teaching: The Schools White Paper (2010) and later associated policy reforms to the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) curriculum in England. The Schools White Paper aims to make the curriculum more challenging to students by introducing tight controls in terms of the assessment framework and curriculum knowledge. I argue that, when considered through Derrida's perspective on language and meaning and Levinas' view on the ethical responsibility for the other, the reforms present obstacles to the search for a just curriculum. I look to the work of Sharon Todd and Paul Standish for a re-imagination of curriculum as or through relations in the light of Derrida's and Levinas' philosophies. (shrink)

Opponents of the Affordable Care Act have attempted to topple it in court by challenging the legality of two of its three legs. Three years ago, in NFIB v. Sibelius, Chief Justice Roberts narrowly upheld the constitutionality of the individual mandate, in a 5-to-4 decision that characterized the mandate as an optional tax rather than as a regulatory command. This year, on June 25, the health policy community exhaled a giant sigh of relief when the Supreme Court upheld (...) the subsidy leg of the ACA structure. In King v. Burwell, Justice Roberts again wrote the majority opinion, ruling as a matter of statutory interpretation that subsidies for insurance premiums are available not just through state-based exchanges but also through the federal exchange. (shrink)

The fundamental question of political reparation is: why should a state provide redress for an injustice? The predominant answer justifies redress in terms of debts—the perpetration of an injustice creates a debt, and a state is required to make redress for the same reasons that it is required to repay its debts . Other approaches justify redress on the grounds that it will facilitate the achievement of some broader political goal, like the fair distribution of social resources or political reconciliation.In (...) Transitional Justice in Established Democracies, Stephen Winter provides a novel answer to this fundamental question in terms of political legitimacy. On Winter’s “legitimating account,” the state’s perpetuation of certain injustices compromises its political legitimacy. Redress is a required for a (liberal, democratic) state to bolster its legitimacy and to live up to its political commitments.Winter’s book makes a number of contributions to thinking about redress and transitional .. (shrink)

This book is concerned with 'how' to think about justice rather than 'what' to think about justice. Its dialectical approach to justice offers a postmodern philosophy which is universal without being absolutist. This stands as an alternative to claims of certainty about justice and to the denials of such certainty in the modern era. to the literary culture of England.

This book arises from a three-year study of Preventive Justice directed by Professor Andrew Ashworth and Professor Lucia Zedner at the University of Oxford. The study seeks to develop an account of the principles and values that should guide and limit the state's use of preventive techniques that involve coercion against the individual. States today are increasingly using criminal law or criminal law-like tools to try to prevent or reduce the risk of anticipated future harm. Such measures include criminalizing (...) conduct at an early stage in order to allow authorities to intervene; incapacitating suspected future wrongdoers; and imposing extended sentences or indefinate on past wrongdoers on the basis of their predicted future conduct - all in the name of public protection and security. The chief justification for the state's use of coercion is protecting the public from harm. Although the rationales and justifications of state punishment have been explored extensively, the scope, limits and principles of preventive justice have attracted little doctrinal or conceptual analysis. This book re-assesses the foundations for the range of coercive measures that states now take in the name of prevention and public protection, focussing particularly on coercive measures involving deprivation of liberty. It examines whether these measures are justified, whether they distort the proper boundaries between criminal and civil law, or whether they signal a larger change in the architecture of security. In so doing, it sets out to establish a framework for what we call 'Preventive Justice'. (shrink)

Former Chief Justice of the King's Bench Sir John Fortescue (c.1395-c.1477) was a key Lancastrian figure. In the first half of the 1470s he presented the Yorkist King Edward IV with his work, The Governance of England. Many scholars have analysed this work as part of the so-called 'English tradition' of constitutional and political theory and as representative of the age of the Wars of the Roses. Only rarely did they contextualize the Governance within the framework of (...) parliamentary politics. As shown in this article, Fortescue in the Governance was both warning the Yorkist regime against dangers to its legitimacy and offering means of resolving these dangers. In all of these concerns Fortescue was in tune with parliamentary politics, where similar concerns were manifest. One of the means through which Fortescue was offering to alleviate the danger of imminent corruption of the constitutional regime in England was through his own legal prestige. (shrink)

Two professionals who treated Jack Adcock before his death were convicted of gross negligence manslaughter, receiving 24-month suspended sentences. His nurse, Isabel Amaro, was erased from the nursing register; but after reviews in the High Court and Court of Appeal, his doctor, Hadiza Bawa-Garba, was merely suspended. This article explores the proposition that nurses are at greater risk of erasure than doctors after gross negligence manslaughter through a close reading of the guidance for medical and nursing tribunals informed by analysis (...) from the High Court and Court of Appeal in the Bawa-Garba cases. Examination of the relevant sections of the guidance for medical and nursing tribunals reveals no significant differences. An outline of the conduct that amounted to breach of duty of care by Amaro and Bawa-Garba shows that their conduct could satisfy the thresholds for erasure given in their professions’ respective guidelines for tribunals. Both presented similar mitigating evidence, although this cannot be weighed heavily in a professional tribunal setting. Thus, Amaro was treated more harshly than Bawa-Garba without a simple explanation. However, I suggest that the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s Conduct and Competence Committee made a mistaken ‘presumption of erasure’ for gross negligence manslaughter and misinterpreted the sway that sentencing remarks should hold over tribunals. Both of these types of error were criticised by the Court of Appeal in Bawa-Garba. Furthermore, the Conduct and Competence Committee did not flesh out its analysis of ‘public confidence’ or acknowledge Lord Hoffmann’s caution against ending ‘useful’ careers for the sake of public confidence, but Bawa-Garba’s legal team ensured these arguments were taken into account by the Medical Professional Tribunal. The Conduct and Competence Committee’s failures are not inherent to Nursing and Midwifery Council procedure or policy. Rather Amaro’s self-representation appears to have impaired her access to justice. Tribunals must accept their right, and responsibility, to reach their own conclusions. (shrink)

The human dimensions involved in the operational objectives of Restorative Justice demand the highest quality of program design and staff training. In this paper, I argue that this desideratum has yet to be fully realized in existing Restorative Justice programs, in particular, with regard to the facilitation of reconciliation. I begin by presenting the chief problems associated with the concentration on reparation in Restorative Justice programs, to the neglect of reconciliation. I then argue that this phenomenon (...) is, in part, a consequence of (i) the almost universal use of service-delivery criteria in the evaluation of Restorative Justice programs, and (ii) the absence of research on the interactional processes involved within the victim-offender encounter itself, using suitably designed methodological tools. (shrink)

Rigby (Center for the Study of Forgiveness and Reconciliation, Coventry U., England) investigates different approaches to "policing" the past, from mass purges ...

If now we turn to the recent translation of the Politics by Carnes Lord we see that the language of "rights" is completely avoided. Lord prefers to speak sometimes in terms of what a person or group of persons is "entitled to" under the laws, or of what is "open" or "permitted" to them; and he usually or always sticks to "justice" or a related term to translate δίκαιον and its derivatives--whether this is justice as established (...) by the laws of a given community or type of community, or the true or correct account of what justice is and demands. It is doubtful, though, whether Lord avoids rights-talk as a matter of interpretative principle. He aims to translate key terms of the Greek with a single English translation throughout, with the result that, since in any event Aristotle uses no single Greek term where we might be tempted to speak of rights, avoiding the language of rights may have seemed to him required simply by his conception of "literal" translation. In his glossary under the heading "Justice," he explicates τὸ δίκαιον in part as "a right or rightful claim" and adds that this sense is generally rendered in his translation by "[claim to] justice." So, if we take this glossary entry as giving his full view, Lord would not object to at least interpreting Aristotle in these passages as speaking of rights or rightful claims. However, Lord is a follower of Leo Strauss and in his avoidance of the noun "right" to render anything Aristotle says, he may also have been falling in with Strauss's own considered view, which was that any attribution of a notion of "rights" to Aristotle or any other ancient thinker is so grossly anachronistic that it must be strictly avoided. In the past forty years or so I think it is fair to say that this view of Strauss's has been shared increasingly by important writers on ancient politics and political thought. Perhaps this tendency is all the more prevalent with the onset of self-described "post-modernist" thought and the historicism in all interpretation of the past that it so often connotes. Is there anything to this objection of vicious anachronism? Were Barker and other older writers making a serious error in rendering and interpreting Aristotle so as to make him hold theories about various ancient constitutions as granting political and other legal rights to people living under them, and also theories of his own about the rights people have under justice as to what their political and legal rights shall be? A major thesis of Fred Miller's recent book, Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle's Politics is that they were not--at least they were not, once certain distinctions are carefully drawn, and one is careful to state what is and what is not implied by the "rights" talk they were so readily finding in Aristotle's texts. In what follows I will limit myself to discussing this thesis of Miller's and his handling of it. (shrink)

The Reputation of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., one of the chief architects of twentieth century American law, has gone through a number of phases, changing from being altogether praiseworthy in the last years of his life and the first years after his death in 1935 to that of more sober evaluations. Writing at mid-century Henry Steele Commager offered the judgment that Holmes had had about him “much of the Olympian [and] something of the Mephistophelean.” The most useful (...) account of how the winds of change swept along Holmes' reputation is an article by G. Edward White, “The Rise and Fall of Justice Holmes,” which appeared in the University of Chicago Law Review in 1971. White examined the myth of Justice Holmes as it obtained from 1932 to 1940 and then proceeded to describe the demythologizing of Holmes from 1941 through 1949. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Climate Justice: Ethics, Energy, and Public PolicyWillis JenkinsClimate Justice: Ethics, Energy, and Public Policy James Martin-Schramm Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010. 232 pp. $20.00Religious ethicists are sometimes tempted to interpret climate change as symptomatic of a civilizational corruption so deep that practical responsibility seems nearly impossible. In its considered treatment of energy options and policy responses, [End Page 198] Climate Justice works to make applied Christian (...) ethics competent to address climate change. By interpreting political possibilities with Christian commitments to justice, the book makes a distinctively practical contribution to the literature on Christianity and climate; it lifts an important theological voice in the growing subfield of climate ethics.The book begins by elaborating the general notion of ecological justice into workable criteria. Martin-Schramm describes four basic norms of ecojustice (sustainability, sufficiency, participation, and solidarity), from which he develops twelve energy policy guidelines (e.g., equity, adequacy). He then specifies those guidelines into fourteen criteria by which to assess the justice of climate action (e.g., historical responsibility, emissions verifiability).Subsequent chapters use those criteria to evaluate policy options. A chief difficulty in applying them lies in the tension between intergenerational and intragenerational claims. Global climate negotiations founder on disagreements about these undeveloped, plural dimensions of justice. Martin-Schramm therefore deploys criteria with a balancing objective: to develop obligations to the future while recognizing claims of the present poor and vulnerable, and while keeping the result within the bounds of North American political viability.For example, Martin-Schramm recognizes that the criterion of historical responsibility indicates that the United States should bear about one-third of the costs of climate transition. But he finds that the resulting figure ($331 billion) so outstrips realistic acceptance that he rejects financial transfer in favor of a “national obligation wedge” in which the nation compensates by pledging to reduce future emissions. Since those emission reductions are unlikely apart from a price on carbon, Martin-Schramm argues that justice mandates a fossil fuel tax. With an eye to political viability, he proposes beginning with a modest $5/ton (for comparison, the Stern Report estimates the social costs of carbon at $85/ton).Controversy in the details matters to the whole project because the point of Martin-Schramm’s approach is that a meaningful climate ethic should guide contextual action. Yet other accounts of climate justice will find a scandal of modesty on those contextual points. Martin-Schramm’s climate justice entails less economic transformation than the “Northern structural adjustment” demanded by the Latin American Council of Churches. It is also less ecocentric than accounts from indigenous theologians arguing that justice warrants rights for species at risk of extinction, and perhaps for Earth itself.While Climate Justice is a self-consciously North American account, the criteria it develops would be different and work more critically were the underlying account of justice dialogically constructed across economic, political, and theological borders. Were it pragmatic, in the sense of arising from projects from across those borders, rather than applied deductively, a Christian climate ethic would likely produce an account of justice with more critical demands on industrial infrastructure and on ecological consciousness. [End Page 199]In its self-limitation, however, lies the book’s practical promise. Martin-Schramm wants justice to illuminate effective ways toward real responsibility. His criteria for justice imply that advocating for impossible goals, or for objectives that would imperil other conditions of social justice, would amount to injustice. Making ethics matter for climate change, he shows, requires understanding what justice can do in context.The open question for this book’s project is how a self-limited ethic of applied justice relates to the deeper processes of social transformation obviously needed for adequate response. Martin-Schramm closes with an account of his work reforming the energy economy of Luther College, which should inspire every reader with a sense of what persistent, informed, and contextual action can accomplish.Willis JenkinsYale Divinity SchoolCopyright © 2012 The Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

The issues before the Supreme Court, arising as they did out of multiple cases and divergent appellate court rulings, were quite complex, and its final decision will be parsed rather differently by lawyers, health policy wonks, and economists (or metaphysical philosophers, in Chief Justice John Roberts's memorable phrase). This essay will focus on one singular element: did the final ruling enhance or detract from our collective power to exercise stewardship over our health care resources? -/- Clearly Americans diverge (...) on key features of a desirable society and on the wisdom of using government to achieve even mutually desirable goals. But before politics settles the fate of the Affordable Care Act (and perhaps also the federal role in health policy for the foreseeable future), we should focus on what the Court has allowed us to consider: if we want it to, federal power may constitutionally be marshalled to compel insurers to end discrimination against the sick and to offer more transparent products so the marketplace will better serve consumers. (shrink)

'Community' and 'justice' recur in anthropological, historical, and legal scholarship, yet as concepts they are notoriously slippery. Historians and lawyers look to anthropologists as 'community specialists', but anthropologists often avoid the concept through circumlocution: although much used by historians, legal thinkers, and political philosophers, the term remains strikingly indeterminate and often morally overdetermined. 'Justice', meanwhile, is elusive, alternately invoked as the goal of contemporary political theorizing, and wrapped in obscure philosophical controversy. A conceptual knot emerges in much legal (...) and political thought between law, justice, and community, but theories abound, without any agreement over concepts.The contributors to this volume use empirical case studies to unpick threads of this knot. Local codes from Anglo-Saxon England, north Africa, and medieval Armenia indicate disjunctions between community boundaries and the subjects of local rules and categories; processes of justice from early modern Europe to eastern Tibet suggest new ways of conceptualizing the relationship between law and justice; and practices of exile that recur throughout the world illustrate contingent formulations of community. In the first book in the series, Legalism: Anthropology and History, law was addressed through a focus on local legal categories as conceptual tools. Here this approach is extended to the ideas and ideals of justice and community. Rigorous cross-cultural comparison allows the contributors to avoid normative assumptions, while opening new avenues of inquiry for lawyers, anthropologists, and historians alike. (shrink)

Defends a theory of social justice for education from within an egalitarian version of liberalism. The theory involves a strong commitment to educational equality, and to the idea that children's rights include a right to personal autonomy. The book argues that school reform must always be evaluated from the perspective of social justice and applies the theory, in particular, to school choice proposals. It looks at the parental choice schemes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and in England and Wales, (...) and argues that they fall short of the requirements of justice, but that not all such schemes must do so. It elaborates an abstract voucher scheme that would combine choice with justice, and offers ways by which actual choice‐based reform can be modified to meet the requirements of justice. (shrink)

Business ethicists have written much about ethical issues in employment. Except for a handful of articles on the very high pay of chief executive officers and the very low pay of workers in overseas sweatshops, however, little has been written about the ethics of compensation. This is prima facie strange. Workers care about their pay, and they think about it in normative terms. This article's purpose is to consider whether business ethicists' neglect of the normative aspects of compensation is (...) justified. I examine several possible justifications for neglecting compensation and show that they fail. What remains is a case for thinking that it is worthy of normative analysis. (shrink)

This is a sustained attack on what the author termed "decido-phobia"—the fear of making fateful decisions. The book begins with an illuminating discussion of ten popular strategies of decido-phobia. Of particular interest to moral philosophy is the attack on "moral rationalism" which "claims that purely rational procedures can show what one ought to do or what would constitute a just society". "Moral irrationalism" is also criticized for ignoring the relevance of reasons "when one is confronted with fateful decision". An ethics (...) of autonomous men is proposed as an alternative to decido-phobia. This ethics involves four cardinal virtues of love, honesty, courage, and "humbition," the last a new coinage for "fusion of ambition and honesty." Both the concepts of justice and guilt are subjected to detailed criticism, since they constitute the chief obstacles on the road to autonomy. Unlike Kantian autonomy, Professor Kaufmann focuses on that which "consists of making with open eyes the decisions that give shape to one’s life". There is no need of Kantian maxims or categorical imperative. Autonomy involves a new integrity or high standards of honesty which consist in a sort of lived intellectual honesty that is characteristic of a mind that is open to alternatives and spirit of questions. Alienation is regarded as a price of autonomy. A searching critique of current conceptions of alienation is given in Chapter 6. The author recommends a creative autonomous way of life. In his concluding words "guilt is mired in the past, as is retributive justice. Distributive justice is struck in the present, but by the time it has figured out how to cope with that, it is dated. We must move beyond guilt and justice. We must give up the pleasant notion that we can have all good things at once. What is best is not things at all but creative autonomy". This is an important theme and requires closer scrutiny of its central arguments and its suggested alternative ethics of creative autonomy.—A.S.C. (shrink)

This paper develops a framework for conceptualising social justice in education, drawing particularly on Martha Nussbaum's (2000) capabilities approach. The practical case for consideration is that of widening participation and pedagogical implications in higher (university) education in England. While the paper supports the value and usefulness of Nussbaum's list of ten capabilities for developing a more radical and challenging language and practice for higher education pedagogies, it also argues that her approach is limited. Other ways of conceptualising social (...) justice are also required in order to develop adjudicating theories which enable us to judge which practices take us closer to social justice. An argument is made for ‘bivalent’ theorising which integrates individual and institutional development and agents and social structures. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper puts forward a normative framework to differentiate between the climate-related responsibilities of different countries in the aftermath of the Paris Agreement. It offers reasons for applying the chief moral principles of ‘historical responsibility’ and ‘capacity’ to climate finance instead of climate change mitigation targets. This will provide a normative basis to realize the goal of climate change mitigation while allowing for developing and newly industrialized countries to develop economically and offer an account of the distributive principles that (...) can regulate climate finance. This is a real-world interpretation of the 1992 UNFCCC principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ that takes into account the progress accomplished at the COP21 in Paris and offers a solution to the still unsolved problem of differentiated responsibilities. This paper offers an application of this proposal to the Green Climate Fund. (shrink)

This book argues that there is a strong normative argument for using the criminal law as a primary response to corporate crime. In practice, however, corporate crimes are rarely dealt with through criminal sanctioning mechanisms. Rather, the preference – for both prosecutors and corporates – appears to be on negotiating out of the criminal process. Reflecting this emphasis on negotiation, this book examines the use of Civil Recovery Orders and Deferred Prosecution Agreements as responses to corporate crime, and discusses a (...) variety of UK case studies. Drawing upon legal and criminological backgrounds, and with an emphasis on the conceptual frameworks of ‘negotiated justice’ and ‘legitimacy’, the authors examine the law, policy and practice of these enforcement responses. They offer an original, theoretically-informed analysis which is accessible to practitioners and researchers. (shrink)

According to Plato, the true philosopher will take on political power only with great reluctance. Onora O’Neill is a prominent political philosopher: specifically, a latter day Kantian and a follower of Rawls. She is also Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge and, as Baroness O’Neill of Bengarve, a crossbench Peer in the House of Lords. I have no idea whether she was at all reluctant to take on these positions. Happily, on the evidence of the present book, they do not appear (...) to have compromised her philosophy. (shrink)

The five chapters in this volume were originally delivered in lecture form at the University of Genoa and have previously appeared in French, German, and English translations. An appendix, "What the Philosopher May Learn from the Study of Law," has also appeared before in English. The book is basically a digest, with some modifications, of Perelman's earlier work Justice et Raison. The chief modification involves a supposed shift away from positivism toward a greater emphasis on the cognitive status (...) of primary values. Through the mediation of his consideration of the nature of practical reason in the Traité de l'Argumentation, Perelman now wishes to argue that values are subject to dialectical justification. The analysis of justice, thus, need not be restricted to merely formal specifications such as the rule of justice or to such inherently nonuniversalizable and nonanalyzable principles as that of equity. Dialectical justification falls short of demonstration, but only someone still under the spell of Cartesianism would wish to maintain that rationality is adequately summarized in the model provided by mathematics and science. Jurisprudence, therefore deals with judgments that have cognitive and not arbitrary or merely historical value. So much for the scheme of Perelman's argument. What about its execution? It must be said that its substance is slight and the base of discussion extraordinarily narrow. Thus, Perelman says he wishes to avoid the Scylla of nominalism and the Charybdis of realism; but his own analysis winds up squarely in a conventionalism that is only minutely distinguishable from the nominalism he presumably attacks: e.g., "the idea of [practical] reason must not be linked to that of truth", "reason is but an attempt to convince the members of [the universal] audience--whom common sense would define as well-informed and reasonable men". The only defense offered by Perelman for the first statement is a flaunting of the bogey of dogmatism. The vicious circle in the second statement is barred from rising to the level of the fruitful Aristotelian paradox by a peremptory dismissal of natural law: "The theorists of natural law... have not convinced the majority of those philosophers of law who are endowed with critical minds." This kind of "you-don't-belong-to-the-club" argument makes the book practically worthless from a truly dialectical point of view. The only critical sparks generated are in Perelman's discussion of Rawls' theory of "justice as fair play." His points here are well taken. But, as this is the only saving grace in the book--the rest being merely a statement of Perelman's own doxa about justice--it would have been better to leave the whole interred in the journals where it had already been published.--E. A. R. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Quentin Meillassoux claims that physical resurrection of the dead is necessary and sufficient for justice to be realized in the world. This article presents two arguments against Meillassoux's claim: the permanence argument, which suggests that events of injustice cannot be erased by what happens later, and the priority argument, which suggests that death is not the chief injustice. The article also investigates the consequences of rejecting Meillassoux's view, asking whether a commitment to justice is still viable (...) if it cannot be fully realized in the world. (shrink)

The field of transitional justice—concerned as it is with the mechanisms of recovery from societal conflict and mass violence—has long found its de facto home in legal theory. While this is in many respects a natural pairing, I argue that just as transitional justice has expanded in scope from the regime-change paradigm to general situations of human rights violations, so too should our conception of it expand from the purely legalistic to the more explicitly ethical. This paper makes (...) the case that while transitional justice remains undertheorized along ethical dimensions, increased attention to both the ethical underpinnings of justice interventions and the ability of ethical work to center the individual experience might go a great distance towards addressing what Pablo de Greiff has identified as three of the chief challenges facing transitional justice today: insufficient attention to context, formulism, and technocratic tendencies. (shrink)

This paper focuses on school choice and the extent to which admissions to publicly-funded secondary schools in England address issues of equity and social justice. It argues that schools with responsibility for their own admissions are more likely than others to act in their own self interest by 'selecting in' or 'creaming' particular pupils and 'selecting out' others. Given this, it is argued that individual schools should not be responsible for admissions. Instead, admissions should be the responsibility of (...) a local authority (or non-partisan body); this body should make decisions about who should be allocated to which school on the basis of the expressed wishes of the parents, and the admissions criteria of the school in question. Admissions criteria should be objective, clear and fair and the admissions system itself should address issues of equity and social justice. It is argued that systems where there are some 'controls' on the choice process should be facilitated to address equity and social justice considerations which can benefit individuals and communities. (shrink)

The reputation of the Christian tradition has fared poorly in the literature on the history of attitudes to nonhuman animals. This is more a consequence of secularist prejudice than objective scholarship. The idea of "dominion" and the understanding of animal souls are almost universally misrepresented. There has been no firmer conclusion than that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution had a profoundly beneficial impact on the recognition of our similarities to, kinship with, and consequent moral obligations to, other species. In reality, (...) Darwinism had no such effect. That there was an essential kinship with, and homologies between, humans and other species had been attested to for centuries. In the first major ethical issue that arose after the publication of Darwin's The Descent of Man -- legislation to restrict vivisection -- Darwin and Huxley stood on the side of more or less unrestricted vivisection while many major explicitly Christian voices -- from Cardinal Manning to Lord Chief Justice Coleridge to the Earl of Shaftesbury -- demanded the most severe restrictions, in many cases abolition. The customary tale of how Christianity hindered the development of sensibilities to animals and how Darwinism occasioned a revolution in animal ethics needs to be rethought and retold. (shrink)

Reason Curve, Jury Competence, and the English Criminal Justice System, a cross-jurisdictional and cross-disciplinary book, seeks to stimulate discussion and extend the debate in the area of criminal trials in light of the absence of an articulated explanation for a verdict. The book traces the history and development of the jury, from the Carolingian kings, its advancement in the English Courts following papal intervention, the impact of the Magna Carta, to its general use, current curtailment in England and (...) Wales, and re-emergence in Continental Europe. Central to the book's submission is the dictum that the jurors' franchise to deliver a cryptic verdict is 'a matter between them and their conscience... (shrink)

What should we do with statues and place‐names memorializing people who committed human‐rights abuses linked to slavery and postslavery racism? In this article, I draw on UN principles of transitional justice to address this question. I propose that a successful approach should meet principles of transitional justice recognized by the United Nations, including affirming rights to justice, truth, reparations, and guarantees of nonrecurrence of human rights violations. I discuss four strategies for handling contested heritage, examining strengths and (...) weaknesses of each strategy. Examples from Bristol, England, highlight common challenges and positive lessons. (shrink)

We are in the midst of a worldwide debate over whether there should be "more" or "less" government. As enthusiasm for free markets mounts - in both former Communist nations and in Western countries such as England and the United States - is it productive to attempt to solve problems through this "more/less" dichotomy?

A dramatic retelling of the story of the Transcendentalists, revealing them not as isolated authors but as a community of social activists who shaped progressive American values. Conflagration illuminates the connections between key members of the Transcendentalist circle—including James Freeman Clarke, Elizabeth Peabody, Caroline Healey Dall, Elizabeth Stanton, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Theodore Parker, and Margaret Fuller—who created a community dedicated to radical social activism. These authors and activists laid the groundwork for democratic and progressive religion in America. In the tumultuous (...) decades before and immediately after the Civil War, the Transcendentalists changed nineteenth-century America, leading what Theodore Parker called “a Second American Revolution.” They instigated lasting change in American society, not only through their literary achievements but also through their activism: transcendentalists fought for the abolition of slavery, democratically governed churches, equal rights for women, and against the dehumanizing effects of brutal economic competition and growing social inequality. The Transcendentalists’ passion for social equality stemmed from their belief in spiritual friendship—transcending differences in social situation, gender, class, theology, and race. Together, their fight for justice changed the American sociopolitical landscape. They understood that none of us can ever fulfill our own moral and spiritual potential unless we care about the full spiritual and moral flourishing of others. (shrink)

Many nations in the world are facing times of austerity with resulting economic pressures. The church is not exempt from this and often responds with practical plans to reshape their ministry and mission in the light of reduced resources. Yet there is a need to engage more positively in developing a contextual ecclesiology that enables mission in challenging times. This article seeks to explore this challenge through the example of the Church of England which is seen in terms of (...) eleven elements of its ecclesiology. Ways in which the context of austerity affects thinking about these elements are explored, both in their positive and negative impacts. Austerity is explored through the themes of fear, security, retreat and connectedness. These themes are used as the basis of the suggestion for a positive shape to an ecclesiology that provides an attractive mission model in such contexts. Resources from a charismatic research project, Flame of Love, are used in support of this model. The aim is to suggest a theological as well as practical response to the challenges that austerity presents. (shrink)

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC 2015) estimates that 35 percent of American adults are obese, while 69 percent are overweight. The CDC also estimates that nearly one in every five children in the United States is obese. The National Bureau of Economic Research estimates that medical treatments of obesity cost US$168.4 billion a year, or 16.5 percent of national spending on medical care (Cawley and Meyerhoefer 2010). Public Health England (n.d.) estimates that 25 percent of (...) the adult population in England is considered obese, while 62 percent of adults are overweight. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that in North America, large portions of Central and South America, most of Europe, Russia, and Australia, 60 percent of the population is overweight. The United States and the United Arab Emirates have the highest obesity rates, according to the WHO, at 32.6 and 33.8 percent, respectively. The rest of North America, those large portions of Central and South America, Europe, Russia, and Australia exhibit rates over 20 percent (WHO n.d.). (shrink)

In England and Wales, Section 15 of the Sexual Offences Act criminalizes the act of meeting a child—someone under 16—after grooming. The question to be pursued in this paper is whether grooming—I confine myself to online grooming—is justly criminalized. I shall argue that it is. One line of thought will be indirect. I shall first try to rebut a general argument against the criminalization of acts that are preparatory to the commission of serious offences. Grooming is one such act, (...) but there are others, sometimes associated with terrorism. According to me, the general argument misapplies certain considerations about autonomy that are alleged to be in force in other areas of criminal law. Contrary to that general argument, criminalization of preparatory acts does not, in general, bypass the agency of citizens. Moreover, the criminalization of preparatory acts can disrupt activity that would have led to very serious crime, and with relatively low costs to the perpetrators, costs that reflect the non-occurrence of the more serious crime. There is evidence that grooming is harmful in itself, and so another point against the general argument is its assumption that preparatory offences are often harmless or at least victimless. There are objections to some of the undercover policing techniques that lead to a Section 15 prosecution, but these objections are not all weighty. (shrink)