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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Abuse Of Property Right Without Political Foundations: A Response To Katz, Mitchell N. Berman
Abuse Of Property Right Without Political Foundations: A Response To Katz, Mitchell N. Berman
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In an article recently published in the Yale Law Journal, Larissa Katz defends a heterodox principle of abuse of property right pursuant to which an owner abuses her rights with respect to a thing she owns if she makes an otherwise permitted decision about how to use that thing just in order to harm others, either out of spite, or for leverage. Katz grounds that principle in a novel theory of the political foundations of the institution of property ownership. This essay argues that Katz’s political theory is implausible, but that this should not doom her preferred principle of …
Competing Theories Of Blackmail: An Empirical Research Critique Of Criminal Law Theory, Paul H. Robinson, Michael T, Cahill, Daniel M. Bartels
Competing Theories Of Blackmail: An Empirical Research Critique Of Criminal Law Theory, Paul H. Robinson, Michael T, Cahill, Daniel M. Bartels
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Blackmail, a wonderfully curious offense, is the favorite of clever criminal law theorists. It criminalizes the threat to do something that would not be criminal if one did it. There exists a rich literature on the issue, with many prominent legal scholars offering their accounts. Each theorist has his own explanation as to why the blackmail offense exists. Most theories seek to justify the position that blackmail is a moral wrong and claim to offer an account that reflects widely shared moral intuitions. But the theories make widely varying assertions about what those shared intuitions are, while also lacking any …