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Full-Text Articles in Law
Framed: Utilitarianism And Punishment Of The Innocent, Guyora Binder, Nicholas J. Smith
Framed: Utilitarianism And Punishment Of The Innocent, Guyora Binder, Nicholas J. Smith
Journal Articles
This paper is a defense of utilitarian penology, against the familiar retributivist charge that it promotes framing the innocent, and other charges similarly depending on the notion that utilitarianism encourages officials to deceive the public. Our defense proceeds from the striking fact that utilitarianism's critics do not cite textual evidence that the originators of utilitarian penology in fact endorsed punishing the innocent or deceiving the public. Instead, critics claim that these unsavory policies follow logically from the premises of utilitarianism. Our argument, in brief, is that the charge of framing the innocent rests on a misunderstanding of utilitarian penology. We …
Beyond Efficiency And Procedure: A Welfarist Theory Of Regulation, Matthew D. Adler
Beyond Efficiency And Procedure: A Welfarist Theory Of Regulation, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
Normative scholarship about regulation has been dominated by two types of theories, which I term "Neoclassical" and "Proceduralist." A Neoclassical theory has the following features: it adopts a simple preference-based view of well-being, and it counts Kaldor-Hicks efficiency as one of the basic normative criteria relevant to the evaluation of regulatory programs. A Proceduralist theory is concerned, not solely with the quality of regulatory outcomes, but also with the governmental procedures that produce these outcomes: it gives intrinsic significance to the procedures that regulatory bodies follow. (One example of a Proceduralist theory is the civic republican theory of regulation advanced …
The Moral Opacity Of Utilitarianism, David B. Lyons
The Moral Opacity Of Utilitarianism, David B. Lyons
Faculty Scholarship
Utilitarians sometimes suggest that their moral theory has an advantage over competing theories in basing moral judgements on the consequences of conduct. As its dictates are determined by empirically determinable facts, it offers a procedure for settling moral controversies on objective grounds. One need not appeal, for example, to the dubious authority of ‘moral intuitions’.
Claims like these are subject to familiar objections at various levels. I shall mention a representative sample and then focus on more serious difficulties stemming from aspects of utilitarianism that I believe have not been fully enough explored.
Expressive Theories Of Law: A Skeptical Overview, Matthew D. Adler
Expressive Theories Of Law: A Skeptical Overview, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
An "expressive theory of law" is, very roughly, a theory that evaluates the actions of legal officials in light of what those actions mean, symbolize, or express. Expressive theories have long played a role in legal scholarship and, recently, have become quite prominent. Elizabeth Anderson, Robert Cooter, Dan Kahan, Larry Lessig, and Richard Pildes, among others, have all recently defended expressive theories (or at least theories that might be characterized as expressive). Expressive notions also play a part in judicial doctrine, particularly in the areas of the Establishment Clause and the Equal Protection Clause.
This paper attempts to provide a …
Book Review: The Problematics Of Moral And Legal Theory, Matthew D. Adler
Book Review: The Problematics Of Moral And Legal Theory, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
Reviewing, Richard A. Posner, The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory (1999)