With a new preface, Robert Paul Wolff's classic analysis of the foundations of the authority of the state and the problems of political authority and moral autonomy in a democracy.

This article presents original empirical data generated from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) Pilot Evaluation of pre-trial witness interviewing (PTWI) in England and Wales. Section 1 introduces the PTWI Pilot and describes the methodological strengths and limitations of our qualitative socio-legal study. Forming the richly documented empirical core of the article, Sections 2–5 identify the principal considerations which seemed to influence case selection for Pilot interviews. An overlapping collection of evidentiary, strategic and circumstantial factors encouraged prosecutors to resort to PTWI, (...) whilst other, countervailing considerations were apprehended as disincentives. Assessments of witness credibility were central to prosecutors’ attempts to balance these competing factors. Section 6 concludes by underlining the potential of qualitative socio-legal studies to promote more nuanced understandings of criminal process, and by extension to make practical contributions to evidence-based criminal procedure reform. (shrink)

The United States is now relying on Reaper and Predator drone strikes as its primary strategy in the continuing “war on terrorism.” This paper argues for the rational scrutiny drone warfare has not yet received. Rather than a Just War critique, my focus is on the rhetoric used to justify drone warfare as the technologically most efficient and militarily appropriate response to terrorist threats. This rationalizing rhetoric evokes mythical claims about American exceptionalism. Myths in turn trigger linguistic frames that have (...) the effect of subverting rational thinking about the ethical uses of technology and the best ways of defending America from terrorists. I conclude by noting the seriousness of this investigation for the present debate over armed drone warfare, for—given the reasons I present—rather than a long-term reduction in the likelihood of terrorists strikes, the U.S.’s reliance on armed drones strikes threatens to institutionalize terrorism as the status quo for the foreseeable future. (shrink)

Konfuzius, Chinas grosser Weiser, ist 1974 wieder einmal von seinen modernen Landsleuten unter Beschuss geraten. In diesem Buch wird das radikal-kritische Bild, das man damals von Konfuzius aufstellte, anhand der Originalquellen uberpruft. Durch diese Methode der Gegenuberstellung versucht der Autor zu zeigen, dass die wahren Anliegen des Meisters und seiner Schule klarer und aktueller zutage treten. Insbesonde sollte deutlich werden, dass Konfuzius' tiefe Einsichten in das menschliche Wesen von einem unerschutterlichen, religios zu nennenden Glauben getragen wurden. In der Post-Mao-Ara sind (...) die Konfuziuskritiker bereits langst wieder selber kritisiert und der Meister teilweise positiver bewertet worden. Der Anhang gibt davon ein gutes Beispiel. Fur den nicht eingeweihten westlichen Leser aber ist die innerchinesische Konfuziusdiskussion nicht ohne weiteres verstandlich. Daher bemuht sich der Autor, die wichtigsten Daten uber Leben und Lehre des Meisters systematisch zu rekonstruieren. Manche Einzelheiten werden dabei neu uberpruft, und die vielen Zitate sind alle neu ubersetzt worden. Somit durfte diese Studie fur Fachleute wie auch fur Laien von Interesse sein. Konfuzius, Chinas immer wieder entthronter Heiliger, der ubrigens nie einen Thron innehatte, wird in seinem Lande noch lange Zeit aktuell bleiben. Daruberhinaus bleibt er eine der grossen Gestalten der Weltgeschichte, die der Menschheit in der Suche nach der wahren Menschlichkeit leuchtend vorangegangen sind.". (shrink)

In 1945, Michael Polanyi achieved, in Full Employment and Free Trade, the integration of Keynesian and monetarist economics that the economics profession did not ahieve until the 1970s. In yet another field, Polanyi saw the heart of important matters long before anyone else.

Karl Marx's great work, Capital, has intrigued and puzzled readers for more than a century by its mystifyingly intricate arguments and dramatic literary embellishments. In this book, Robert Paul Wolff dispels much of the mystery surrounding Capital by providing a literary-philosophical analysis of the text and of Marx's intentions.

_In Defense of Anarchism_ is a 1970 book by the philosopher Robert Paul Wolff, in which the author defends individualist anarchism. He argues that individual autonomy and state authority are mutually exclusive and that, as individual autonomy is inalienable, the moral legitimacy of the state collapses.

“This volume’s twenty-one essays present a spectrum of contemporary understandings and interpretations of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. In the three general areas of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, his ethical theory, and his aesthetics, various particular aspects of Kant’s philosophy are examined in depth. Connecting papers discuss his concept of synthetic and analytic and debate the meaning of the categorical imperative. A wide range of post-war scholarship is represented: all of the papers have been written since 1945, and three (...) appear in this volume for the first time. No philosopher has had a greater influence on contemporary thought than Kant; his influence and the place of his ideas in contemporary philosophical argument are evidenced and illuminated in these essays.”- Publisher. (shrink)

This comprehensive text covers all the standard topics of the contemporary logic course--informal logic, classical deductive logic, induction and scientific reasoning, including the logical fallacies, legal reasoning, and the practice of argument analysis. Exceptionally fine examples and exercises illustrate and reinforce important points throughout. The text is accompanied by a Study Guide for students and an Instructor's Manual.

The writings of the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser and his associates have figured prominently in the development of contemporary social theory. The Althusserian school of Structural Marxism is a startlingly original synthesis of Marxism and Modernism, which has produced a large body of work that extends across the human sciences and the humanities to engage a wide variety of cultures, theoretical problems, and political issues. Despite the fact that Althusser himself is widely recognized as a major figure, the breadth, (...) coherence, and achievements of Structural Marxism as a whole have gone largely unrecognized. In this, the most systematic and wide-ranging assessment of Structural Marxism in any language, Resch provides a comprehensive and thematic introduction to the work of Althusser, Nicos Poulantzas, Pierre Macherey, Etienne Balibar, Emmanuel Terray, Terry Eagleton, Göran Therborn, Renée Balibar, Perry Anderson, Pierre-Philippe Rey, Michel Pêchaux, Guy Bois, and others. Resch's sympathetic and critical study demonstrates the enormous significance of Althusser's modernist renewal of Marxist social theory and its ongoing challenge to post-Marxist movements such as postmodernism and neo-liberalism. (shrink)

This article is a contribution to interdisciplinary scholarship addressing the presumption of innocence, especially interdisciplinary conversations between philosophers and jurists. Terminological confusion and methodological traps and errors notoriously beset academic literature addressing the presumption of innocence and related concepts, such as evidentiary presumptions, and the burden and standard of proof in criminal trials. This article is diagnostic, in the sense that its primary objective is to highlight the assumptions—in particular, the disciplinary assumptions—implicit in influential contributions to debates on the presumption (...) of innocence. It advocates a methodologically pluralistic approach, according to which definitions of the presumption of innocence are necessarily sensitive to purpose and method. These relationships and their implications are not always appreciated, and are seldom explicitly elucidated. Notably, philosophers routinely treat the presumption of innocence as epistemic, evidentiary or otherwise featuring directly in practical reasoning. This article identifies jurisprudential and practical reasons why legal scholars and practitioners concerned with criminal procedure and evidence should reject evidentiary interpretations of the presumption of innocence. By encouraging finer-grained engagement with the history and institutional details of common law procedural traditions, the article aims to show why legal scholars might think that philosophical approaches to the presumption of innocence are already methodologically-loaded and, for our purposes, address the wrong questions with deficient concepts. (shrink)

At a minimum, a fiduciary is one who is entrusted to act for the benefit of others. But as the essays in this volume indicate, fiduciary relationships can be conceived or argued to be thicker and/or more robust. In addition to a relation of trust and action on behalf of another, fiduciary relationships are often thought to include some or all of the following additions: asymmetries of power, knowledge, skill or ability; discretion or reasonable judgment on the part of the (...) fiduciary; loyalty of the fiduciary to the interests of the trustor, or potential beneficiary; and the ethical obligation to act in good faith, with due care, or with professional or special knowledge in advancing the interests of the trustor. Due to the vulnerability of dependents, their trust in fiduciaries, and ethical obligations of trustees to act beneficently, fiduciary relationships lie at the heart of much ethical reflection, discourse and argumentation. This is especially so for professional fields in which fiduciaries have special knowledge and skill, and consequently special powers. Yet, apart from the specialized sub-disciplines of business ethics, legal ethics and medical ethics, fiduciary roles and relationships have not received much scrutiny and discussion in philosophy. In our view, this deficiency is best remedied by treating fiduciary ethics as a more general sub-field within ethics and deserving of attention in its own right. (shrink)

One of the most important methods in dealing with the optimization of large, complex systems is that of hierarchical decomposition. The idea is to reduce the overall complex problem into manageable approximate problems or subproblems, to solve these problems, and to construct a solution of the original problem from the solutions of these simpler prob lems. Development of such approaches for large complex systems has been identified as a particularly fruitful area by the Committee on the Next Decade in Operations (...) Research (1988) [42] as well as by the Panel on Future Directions in Control Theory (1988) [65]. Most manufacturing firms are complex systems characterized by sev eral decision subsystems, such as finance, personnel, marketing, and op erations. They may have several plants and warehouses and a wide variety of machines and equipment devoted to producing a large number of different products. Moreover, they are subject to deterministic as well as stochastic discrete events, such as purchasing new equipment, hiring and layoff of personnel, and machine setups, failures, and repairs. (shrink)