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Articles 1 - 16 of 16
Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence
A Standard Of Global Justice, Steven R. Ratner
A Standard Of Global Justice, Steven R. Ratner
Book Chapters
This chapter presents the standard of justice that is used in this book to appraise international law. That standard is based on two core principles, or what the book calls pillars—the promotion of international and intrastate peace, on the one hand, and respect for the basic human rights of all individuals, on the other. The justice of international norms is determined by the extent to which they lead to a state of affairs involving peace and human rights, with some room for deontological considerations in limited situations. The chapter defends the choice of these two pillars. It elaborates on the …
Ethics And International Law: Integrating The Global Justice Project(S), Steven R. Ratner
Ethics And International Law: Integrating The Global Justice Project(S), Steven R. Ratner
Articles
Academic discourse on global justice is at an all-time high. Within ethics and international law, scholars are undertaking new inquiries into age-old questions of building a just world order. Ethics – political and moral philosophy – poses fundamental questions about responsibilities at the global level and produces a tightly reasoned set of frameworks regarding world order. International law, with its focus on legal norms and institutional arrangements, provides a path, as well as illuminates the obstacles, to implementing theories of the right or of the good. Yet despite the complementarity of these two projects, neither is drawing what it should …
Cute Prickly Critter With Presbyopia, Don Herzog
Cute Prickly Critter With Presbyopia, Don Herzog
Reviews
Ronald Dworkin's' latest, long-awaited, and most ambitious book is a puzzle. Truth in advertising first: despite the title, this isn't centrally a book about justice. It's a book about the realm of value-all of that realm. Dworkin is most interested here in morality, but really touches on all of it, as a matter of the application of the abstract argument and sometimes in black and white right on the page, from aesthetics to prudence to morality to politics to law to . . . . It's fun to read, also frustrating. It stretches out lazily in handling some issues but …
How To Be A Moorean, Donald H. Regan
How To Be A Moorean, Donald H. Regan
Articles
G. E. Moore’s position in the moral philosophy canon is paradoxical. On the one hand, he is widely regarded as the most influential moral philosopher of the twentieth century. On the other hand, his most characteristic doctrines are now more often ridiculed than defended or even discussed seriously. I shall discuss briefly a number of Moorean topics—the nonnaturalness of “good,” the open question argument, the relation of the right and the good, whether fundamental value is intrinsic, and the role of beauty—hoping to explain how a philosophically informed person could actually be a Moorean even today.1
The Value Of Rational Nature, Donald H. Regan
The Value Of Rational Nature, Donald H. Regan
Articles
Kant tells us in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals that rational nature is an end in itself; that it is the only thing which is unconditionally valuable; and that it is the ultimate condition of all value.1 A striking trend in recent Kant scholarship is to regard these value claims, rather than the formalism of universalizability, as the ultimate foundation of Kant’s theory.2 But does rational nature as Kant conceives it deserve such veneration? Can it really carry the world of value on its shoulders? I think not. As will become clear, I do not doubt the value …
Law's Normative Claims, Philip E. Soper
Law's Normative Claims, Philip E. Soper
Book Chapters
People can look at non-conforming behaviour in two ways: either the person is acting immorally or the moral theory that condemns the behaviour is mistaken. To choose the former is to reflect a confidence in the existing moral theory, while choosing the latter is evidence that moral theory for that particular behaviour is wrong. This point says a lot about the link between the descriptive and evaluative enterprises of law. The development of basic moral principles, which draws from moral intuition, is a similar process when it comes to developing social practices, which in turn draw from human behaviour. Legal …
The Tension Between Rules And Discretion In Family Law: A Report And Reflection, Carl E. Schneider
The Tension Between Rules And Discretion In Family Law: A Report And Reflection, Carl E. Schneider
Articles
The history of law is many things. But one of them is the story of an unremitting struggle between rules and discretion. The tension between these two approaches to legal problems continues to pervade and perplex the law today. Perhaps nowhere is that tension more pronounced and more troubling than in family law. It is probably impossible to practice family law without wrestling with the imponderable choice between rules and discretion. Consider, for example, how many areas of family law are now being fought over in-just those terms. For decades we have lived with an abundantly discretionary way of resolving …
Reasons, Authority, And The Meaning Of 'Obey': Further Thoughts On Raz And Obedience To Law, Donald H. Regan
Reasons, Authority, And The Meaning Of 'Obey': Further Thoughts On Raz And Obedience To Law, Donald H. Regan
Articles
I recently published a long article' discussing a variety of topics from Joseph Raz's The Morality of Freedom.2 The article was part of a symposium on Raz's work in the Southern California Law Review. Raz responded' to the articles in that symposium, including my own. From a perspective which surveys the whole range of views on political philosophy, Raz's view and mine look very similar. Even so, we find many things to disagree about, which neither of us would regard as merely matters of detail. For the most part, we at least share a common understanding of our disagreements. But …
Authority And Value: Reflections On Raz's Morality Of Freedom, Donald H. Regan
Authority And Value: Reflections On Raz's Morality Of Freedom, Donald H. Regan
Articles
Joseph Raz's The Morality of Freedom1 is full of subtle, original, and thought provoking arguments. It also manifests abundantly Raz's philosophical good sense and sensitivity to the complexities of the moral life. These are reasons enough to class it with the handful of genuinely important books whose appearance in the last two decades has constituted a renaissance in political philosophy. But in my opinion, Raz has another, and even stronger claim on our attention: He comes closer to the truth about political morality than anyone has for nearly a century. (Possibly much longer, but we need not attempt to decide …
Law's Halo, Donald H. Regan
Law's Halo, Donald H. Regan
Articles
Like many people these days, I believe there is no general moral obligation to obey the law. I shall explain why there is no such moral obligation - and I shall clarify what I mean when I say there is no moral obligation to obey the law - as we proceed. But also like many people, I am unhappy with a position that would say there was no moral obligation to obey the law and then say no more about the law's moral significance. In our thinking about law in a reasonably just society, we have a strong inclination to …
Alternative Methodologies In Contemporary Jurisprudence: Comments On Dworkin, Philip E. Soper
Alternative Methodologies In Contemporary Jurisprudence: Comments On Dworkin, Philip E. Soper
Articles
I have two brief points to make. Both involve recent developments in jurisprudence, by which I mean by and large the subject that Ronald Dworkin has just been discussing. Indeed, the first point is little more than an acknowledgement of the debt that is owed to Dworkin, not only for his specific contributions to this field, but for the implications of his work for law teaching generally.
What A Sensible Natural Lawyer And A Sensible Utilitarian Agree About And Disagree About: Comments On Finnis, Donald H. Regan
What A Sensible Natural Lawyer And A Sensible Utilitarian Agree About And Disagree About: Comments On Finnis, Donald H. Regan
Articles
Before I start, let me say two things. First of all, to the extent that John Finnis is entering a plea for more attention to what is a relatively neglected tradition (in the narrow his message a hundred percent. And you courd learning about the natural law tradition than by reading his book, Natural Law and Natural Rights. My second introductory observation is that Finnis and I agree about many more things than you might expect if you just think of him as a natural law theorist and me as a utilitarian. I am very eccentric as a utilitarian. He …
On Preferences And Promises: A Response To Harsanyi, Donald H. Regan
On Preferences And Promises: A Response To Harsanyi, Donald H. Regan
Articles
John C. Harsanyi sketches an entire normative and metaethical theory in under twenty pages. Combining breadth and brevity, his essay is useful and interesting. It reveals the interrelations between Harsanyi's positions on various issues as no longer work or series of articles could do. But by virtue of its programmatic nature, the essay creates a dilemma for a commentator, at least for one who finds many things to disagree with. If I responded to Harsanyi in the same sweeping terms in which he argues, we would end up with little more than opposing assertions. At the other extreme, I could …
Glosses On Dworkin: Rights, Principles, And Policies, Donald H. Regan
Glosses On Dworkin: Rights, Principles, And Policies, Donald H. Regan
Articles
A great many people have attempted to explain what is wrong with the views of Ronald Dworkin. So many, indeed, that one who read only the critics might wonder why views so widely rejected have received so much attention. One reason is that, whatever may be wrong in Dworkin's theories, there is a good deal that is right in them. But what is right is not always clear. Important passages in Dworkin can be distressingly obscure, or tantalizingly incomplete. This essay is a set of loosely connected observations on themes from Dworkin. While I shall add some criticisms of my …
Review Of Jurisprudence: Men And Ideas Of The Law, By E. W. Patterson, John W. Reed
Review Of Jurisprudence: Men And Ideas Of The Law, By E. W. Patterson, John W. Reed
Reviews
Jurisprudence: Men and Ideas of the Law was written as a textbook for students enrolled in Columbia's jurisprudence course. It appeared first inmimeograph in 1940, and has gone through three revisions before emerging in its present printed form. Thirteen years is not a record incubation period, but it typifies the care and thoroughness with which Professor Patterson works and with which he has prepared the present volume. Each sentence, each paragraph, each section is, to me, a clear statement of his meaning and serves his purpose well.
Jurisprudence: A Formal Science, Joseph H. Drake
Jurisprudence: A Formal Science, Joseph H. Drake
Articles
Holland defines jurisprudence as "the formal science of positive law". The meaning of science is plain enough. A good many pages are devoted to the elucidation of the words "positive" and "law," but the term "formal" he explains only by analogy. As there is a formal science of grammar to which belongs, for example, the concept of possession, which has its material manifestation in Latin grammar in a genetive termination and in English grammar in the preposition "of," so there is a formal science of law, material manifestations of whose fundamental principles are found in various systems of actual legal …