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Articles 1 - 30 of 187
Full-Text Articles in Philosophy
How Practices Make Principles, And How Principles Make Rules, Mitchell N. Berman
How Practices Make Principles, And How Principles Make Rules, Mitchell N. Berman
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The most fundamental question in general jurisprudence concerns what makes it the case that the law has the content that it does. This article offers a novel answer. According to the theory it christens “principled positivism,” legal practices ground legal principles, and legal principles determine legal rules. This two-level account of the determination of legal content differs from Hart’s celebrated theory in two essential respects: in relaxing Hart’s requirement that fundamental legal notions depend for their existence on judicial consensus; and in assigning weighted contributory legal norms—“principles”—an essential role in the determination of legal rights, duties, powers, and permissions. Drawing …
Undemocratic Crimes, Paul H. Robinson, Jonathan C. Wilt
Undemocratic Crimes, Paul H. Robinson, Jonathan C. Wilt
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One might assume that in a working democracy the criminal law rules would reflect the community’s shared judgments regarding justice and punishment. This is especially true because social science research shows that lay people generally think about criminal liability and punishment in consistent ways: in terms of desert, doing justice and avoiding injustice. Moreover, there are compelling arguments for demanding consistency between community views and criminal law rules based upon the importance of democratic values, effective crime-control, and the deontological value of justice itself.
It may then come as a surprise, and a disappointment, that a wide range of common …
The Criminogenic Effects Of Damaging Criminal Law’S Moral Credibility, Paul H. Robinson, Lindsay Holcomb
The Criminogenic Effects Of Damaging Criminal Law’S Moral Credibility, Paul H. Robinson, Lindsay Holcomb
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The criminal justice system’s reputation with the community can have a significant effect on the extent to which people are willing to comply with its demands and internalize its norms. In the context of criminal law, the empirical studies suggest that ordinary people expect the criminal justice system to do justice and avoid injustice, as they perceive it – what has been called “empirical desert” to distinguish it from the “deontological desert” of moral philosophers. The empirical studies and many real-world natural experiments suggest that a criminal justice system that regularly deviates from empirical desert loses moral credibility and thereby …
Individualizing Criminal Law’S Justice Judgments: Shortcomings In The Doctrines Of Culpability, Mitigation, And Excuse, Paul H. Robinson, Lindsay Holcomb
Individualizing Criminal Law’S Justice Judgments: Shortcomings In The Doctrines Of Culpability, Mitigation, And Excuse, Paul H. Robinson, Lindsay Holcomb
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In judging an offender’s culpability, mitigation, or excuse, there seems to be general agreement that it is appropriate for the criminal law to take into account such things as the offender’s youthfulness or her significantly low IQ. There is even support for taking account of their distorted perceptions and reasoning induced by traumatic experiences, as in battered spouse syndrome. On the other hand, there seems to be equally strong opposition to taking account of things such as racism or homophobia that played a role in bringing about the offense. In between these two clear points, however, exists a large collection …
Criminal Law’S Core Principles, Paul H. Robinson
Criminal Law’S Core Principles, Paul H. Robinson
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Modern criminal law scholars and policymakers assume they are free to construct criminal law rules by focusing exclusively on the criminal justice theory of the day. But this “blank slate” conception of criminal lawmaking is dangerously misguided. In fact, lawmakers are writing on a slate on which core principles are already indelibly written and realistically they are free only to add detail in the implementation of those principles and to add additional provisions not inconsistent with them. Attempts to do otherwise are destined to produce tragic results from both utilitarian and retributivist views.
Many writers dispute that such core principles …
Proportionality, Constraint, And Culpability, Mitchell N. Berman
Proportionality, Constraint, And Culpability, Mitchell N. Berman
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Philosophers of criminal punishment widely agree that criminal punishment should be “proportional” to the “seriousness” of the offense. But this apparent consensus is only superficial, masking significant dissensus below the surface. Proposed proportionality principles differ on several distinct dimensions, including: (1) regarding which offense or offender properties determine offense “seriousness” and thus constitute a proportionality relatum; (2) regarding whether punishment is objectionably disproportionate only when excessively severe, or also when excessively lenient; and (3) regarding whether the principle can deliver absolute (“cardinal”) judgments, or only comparative (“ordinal”) ones. This essay proposes that these differences cannot be successfully adjudicated, and one …
Against The Received Wisdom: Why The Criminal Justice System Should Give Kids A Break, Stephen J. Morse
Against The Received Wisdom: Why The Criminal Justice System Should Give Kids A Break, Stephen J. Morse
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Professor Gideon Yaffe’s recent, intricately argued book, The Age of Culpability: Children and the Nature of Criminal Responsibility, argues against the nearly uniform position in both law and scholarship that the criminal justice system should give juveniles a break not because on average they have different capacities relevant to responsibility than adults, but because juveniles have little say about the criminal law, primarily because they do not have a vote. For Professor Yaffe, age has political rather than behavioral significance. The book has many excellent general analyses about responsibility, but all are in aid of the central thesis about …
Rethinking Copyright And Personhood, Christopher S. Yoo
Rethinking Copyright And Personhood, Christopher S. Yoo
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One of the primary theoretical justifications for copyright is the role that creative works play in helping develop an individual’s sense of personhood and self-actualization. Typically ascribed to the writings of Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, personhood-based theories of copyright serve as the foundation for the moral rights prominent in European copyright law and mandated by the leading intellectual property treaty, which give authors inalienable control over aspects of their works after they have been created. The conventional wisdom about the relationship between personhood and copyright suffers from two fatal flaws that have gone largely unappreciated. First, in …
The Subversions And Perversions Of Shadow Vigilantism, Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson
The Subversions And Perversions Of Shadow Vigilantism, Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson
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This excerpt from the recently published Shadow Vigilantes book argues that, while vigilantism, even moral vigilantism, can be dangerous to a society, the real danger is not of hordes of citizens, frustrated by the system’s doctrines of disillusionment, rising up to take the law into their own hands. Frustration can spark a vigilante impulse, but such classic aggressive vigilantism is not the typical response. More common is the expression of disillusionment in less brazen ways by a more surreptitious undermining and distortion of the operation of the criminal justice system.
Shadow vigilantes, as they might be called, can affect the …
Findlay Stark, Culpable Carelessness: Recklessness And Negligence In The Criminal Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan
Findlay Stark, Culpable Carelessness: Recklessness And Negligence In The Criminal Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan
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Culpable Carelessness by Findlay Stark is a careful and considered contribution to the 'punishment for negligence' debate. As well as providing a comprehensive overview of the doctrinal and theoretical aspects of recklessness and negligence in the criminal law, it also offers novel insights for scholars already steeped in these debates. An additional methodological strength is that Stark takes seriously the connection between theory and law, offering useful potential jury instructions on recklessness and negligence.
Arguing With Friends, William Baude, Ryan D. Doerfler
Arguing With Friends, William Baude, Ryan D. Doerfler
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It is a fact of life that judges sometimes disagree about the best outcome in appealed cases. The question is what they should make of this. The two purest possibilities are to shut out all other views, or else to let them all in, leading one to concede ambiguity and uncertainty in most if not all contested cases.
Drawing on the philosophical concepts of “peer disagreement” and “epistemic peerhood,” we argue that there is a better way. Judges ought to give significant weight to the views of others, but only when those others share the judge’s basic methodology or interpretive …
The Inevitability And Ubiquity Of Cycling In All Feasible Legal Regimes: A Formal Proof, Leo Katz, Alvaro Sandroni
The Inevitability And Ubiquity Of Cycling In All Feasible Legal Regimes: A Formal Proof, Leo Katz, Alvaro Sandroni
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Intransitive choices, or cycling, are generally held to be the mark of irrationality. When a set of rules engenders such choices, it is usually held to be irrational and in need of reform. In this article, we prove a series of theorems, demonstrating that all feasible legal regimes are going to be rife with cycling. Our first result, the legal cycling theorem, shows that unless a legal system meets some extremely restrictive conditions, it will lead to cycling. The discussion that follows, along with our second result, the combination theorem, shows exactly why these conditions are almost impossible to meet. …
Strict Liability's Criminogenic Effect, Paul H. Robinson
Strict Liability's Criminogenic Effect, Paul H. Robinson
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It is easy to understand the apparent appeal of strict liability to policymakers and legal reformers seeking to reduce crime: if the criminal law can do away with its traditional culpability requirement, it can increase the likelihood of conviction and punishment of those who engage in prohibited conduct or bring about prohibited harm or evil. And such an increase in punishment rate can enhance the crime-control effectiveness of a system built upon general deterrence or incapacitation of the dangerous. Similar arguments support the use of criminal liability for regulatory offenses. Greater punishment rates suggest greater compliance.
But this analysis fails …
How Being Right Can Risk Wrongs, Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson
How Being Right Can Risk Wrongs, Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson
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This is a chapter from the new book The Vigilante Echo. Previous chapters have made clear that some vigilantism can be morally justified where the government has failed in its promise under the social contract to protect and to do justice. But this chapter explains how even moral vigilante action can be problematic for the larger society. Vigilantes may try to do the right thing but are likely to lack the training and professional neutrality of police. They may be successful, but only on pushing the crime problem to an adjacent neighborhood. Because their open lawbreaking may seem admirable …
Modest Retributivism, Mitchell N. Berman
Modest Retributivism, Mitchell N. Berman
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No abstract provided.
Judge Posner’S Simple Law, Mitchell N. Berman
Judge Posner’S Simple Law, Mitchell N. Berman
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The world is complex, Richard Posner observes in his most recent book, Reflections on Judging. It follows that, to resolve real-world disputes sensibly, judges must be astute students of the world’s complexity. The problem, he says, is that, thanks to disposition, training, and professional incentives, they aren’t. Worse than that, the legal system generates its own complexity precisely to enable judges “to avoid rather than meet and overcome the challenge of complexity” that the world delivers. Reflections concerns how judges needlessly complexify inherently simple law, and how this complexification can be corrected.
Posner’s diagnoses and prescriptions range widely—from the Bluebook …
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 …
Introduction To The Structure And Limits Of Criminal Law, Paul H. Robinson, Joshua Samuel Barton
Introduction To The Structure And Limits Of Criminal Law, Paul H. Robinson, Joshua Samuel Barton
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The book The Structure and Limits of Criminal Law (Ashgate) collects and reprints classic articles on three topics: the conceptual structure of criminal law doctrine, the conduct necessary and that sufficient for criminal liability, and the offender culpability and blameworthiness necessary and that sufficient for criminal liability. The collection includes articles by H.L.A. Hart, Sanford Kadish, George Fletcher, Herbert Packer, Norval Morris, Gordon Hawkins, Andrew von Hirsch, Bernard Harcourt, Richard Wasserstrom, Andrew Simester, John Darley, Kent Greenawalt, and Paul Robinson. This essay serves as an introduction to the collection, explaining how each article fits into the larger debate and giving …
Conditional Spending And The Conditional Offer Puzzle, Mitchell N. Berman
Conditional Spending And The Conditional Offer Puzzle, Mitchell N. Berman
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No abstract provided.
Neuroscience And The Future Of Personhood And Responsibility, Stephen J. Morse
Neuroscience And The Future Of Personhood And Responsibility, Stephen J. Morse
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This is a chapter in a book, Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change, edited by Jeffrey Rosen and Benjamin Wittes and published by Brookings. It considers whether likely advances in neuroscience will fundamentally alter our conceptions of human agency, of what it means to be a person, and of responsibility for action. I argue that neuroscience poses no such radical threat now and in the immediate future and it is unlikely ever to pose such a threat unless it or other sciences decisively resolve the mind-body problem. I suggest that until that happens, neuroscience might contribute to the reform of …
Privacy Law: Positive Theory And Normative Practice, Anita L. Allen
Privacy Law: Positive Theory And Normative Practice, Anita L. Allen
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No abstract provided.
Pluralistic Nonoriginalism And The Combinability Problem, Mitchell N. Berman, Kevin Toh
Pluralistic Nonoriginalism And The Combinability Problem, Mitchell N. Berman, Kevin Toh
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No abstract provided.
On What Distinguishes New Originalism From Old: A Jurisprudential Take, Mitchell N. Berman
On What Distinguishes New Originalism From Old: A Jurisprudential Take, Mitchell N. Berman
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No abstract provided.
Alexander's Genius, Mitchell N. Berman
The Normativity Of Copying In Copyright Law, Shyamkrishna Balganesh
The Normativity Of Copying In Copyright Law, Shyamkrishna Balganesh
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Not all copying constitutes copyright infringement. Quite independent of fair use, copyright law requires that an act of copying be qualitatively and quantitatively significant enough or “substantially similar” for it to be actionable. Originating in the nineteenth century, and entirely the creation of courts, copyright’s requirement of “substantial similarity” has thus far received little attention as an independently meaningful normative dimension of the copyright entitlement. This Article offers a novel theory for copyright’s substantial-similarity requirement by placing it firmly at the center of the institution and its various goals and purposes. As a common-law-style device that mirrors the functioning of …
Culpable Aggression: The Basis For Moral Liability To Defensive Killing, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan
Culpable Aggression: The Basis For Moral Liability To Defensive Killing, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan
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The use of the term, "self-defense, " covers a wide array of defensive behaviors, and different actions that repel attacks may be permissible for different reasons. One important justificatory feature of some defensive behaviors is that the aggressor has rendered himself liable to defensive force by his own conduct. That is, when a culpable aggressor points a gun at a defender, and says, "I am going to kill you," the aggressor's behavior forfeits the aggressor's right against the defender's infliction of harm that is intended to repel the aggressor's attack. Because the right is forfeited, numbers do not count (the …
What Must We Hide: The Ethics Of Privacy And The Ethos Of Disclosure, Anita L. Allen
What Must We Hide: The Ethics Of Privacy And The Ethos Of Disclosure, Anita L. Allen
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No abstract provided.
Perceptions Of Fairness And Justice: The Shared Aims And Occasional Conflicts Of Legitimacy And Moral Credibility, Josh Bowers, Paul H. Robinson
Perceptions Of Fairness And Justice: The Shared Aims And Occasional Conflicts Of Legitimacy And Moral Credibility, Josh Bowers, Paul H. Robinson
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No abstract provided.
Danger: The Ethics Of Preemptive Action, Larry Alexander, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan
Danger: The Ethics Of Preemptive Action, Larry Alexander, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan
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The law has developed principles for dealing with morally and legally responsible actors who act in ways that endanger others, the principles governing crime and punishment. And it has developed principles for dealing with the morally and legally nonresponsible but dangerous actors, the principles governing civil commitments. It has failed, however, to develop a cogent and justifiable set of principles for dealing with responsible actors who have not yet acted in ways that endanger, others but who are likely to do so in the future, those whom we label "responsible but dangerous" actors (RBDs). Indeed, as we argue, the criminal …
Notice-And-Comment Sentencing, Stephanos Bibas, Richard A. Bierschbach
Notice-And-Comment Sentencing, Stephanos Bibas, Richard A. Bierschbach
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No abstract provided.