Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons^™

An Animal Victim's Best Chance: Veterinary Legal Duty To Report Cruelty In The U.S., Lora Dunn

Animal Sentience

Legislation throughout the U.S. recognizes animal sentience and the importance of veterinary reporting to combat the ongoing suffering of these animal victims: All 50 states have felony penalties available for animal cruelty crimes, and veterinary reporting is permitted or required in the majority of states. The remaining minority of U.S. states should take action to require veterinarians to report animal cruelty and render veterinarians immune for good faith reporting.

Reparations For Racism: Why The Persistence Of Institutional Racism In America Demands More Than Equal Opportunity For Black Citizens, Alexander Lowe

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

No abstract provided.

The History Of Inequality In Education And The Question Of Equality Versus Adequacy, Diana Carol Dominguez

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Although the U.S. Constitution espouses equality, it clearly is not practiced in all aspects of life with education being a significant outlier. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote about inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These two theories are related to education through educational adequacy and equality. Sufficientarianism, or educational adequacy, says that what is important is that everyone has “good enough” educational opportunities, but not the same ones. Egalitarianism, or educational equality, says that there is an intrinsic value in having the same educational opportunities and only having good enough opportunities misses something …

Raj Rajaratnam: Cheater (Revised), Alicia Baker

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

No abstract provided.

Becoming What We Are: Virtue And Practical Wisdom As Natural Ends, Keith Buhler

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

This dissertation is about ethical naturalism. Philippa Foot and John McDowell both defend contemporary neo-Aristotelian ethics but each represents a rival expression of the same. They are united in the affirmation that virtue is ‘natural goodness’ for human beings. Nevertheless, they are divided in their rival conceptions of ‘nature.’ McDowell distinguishes second nature or the "space of reasons" from first nature or the “realm of law.” Foot rejects this division.

On Foot's naturalism, natural goodness is just as much a feature of first nature as health is, even though human practical reasoning is unique in the biological world. I defend …

El Nuevo Pacto Protestante: La Influencia De La Teología Protestante En El Derecho De Bienes Y Contratos, Brian Mccall

Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Es imposible disociar la moral (o la ética) de la doctrina teológica. Como Richard Weaver explicó en el pasado siglo, las ideas tienen consecuencias. Por lo tanto, un cambio de doctrina teológica irá inevitablemente acompañado por un cambio en las normas que gobiernan la conducta. Dado que la ley humana es relativa a los usos y costumbres de la comunidad para la cual se dicta y se desarrolla a la luz de aquéllos, tales cambios terminarán abriéndose paso en las leyes. Después de quinientos años, las nuevas doctrinas del protestantismo han producido sus efectos sobre la moral y el derecho. …

The Legitimacy Of International Law, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The conduct of international affairs is subject to three kinds of normative standards. The first of these is prudence or rational self-interest, and its most common manifestation in international affairs involves reference to a state's national interest as a basis for defending or critiquing its international conduct. Justice provides a second metric for assessing the international conduct of states, and sometimes other actors, and a set of normative concepts including freedom, equality and fairness with which to argue for or against particular acts or policies. Law, including both international law and the foreign law of particular states, provides the third …

Should The Law Convict Those Who Act From Conviction? Reflections On A Demands-Of-Conscience Criminal Defense, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

How should the judge or jury in a just criminal court treat a civil disobedient, someone who performs a conscientiously motivated communicative breach of the criminal law? Kimberley Brownlee contends that all else equal a court of law should neither convict nor punish such offenders. Though I agree with this conclusion, I contend that Brownlee mischaracterizes the nature of the criminal defense to which civil disobedients are entitled. Whereas Brownlee maintains that such actors ought to be excused for their criminal breach, I argue that they ought to enjoy a justification defense. Acts of civil disobedience are not (morally) wrongful …

Aggregating Moral Preferences, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

Preference-aggregation problems arise in various contexts. One such context, little explored by social choice theorists, is metaethical. “Ideal-advisor” accounts, which have played a major role in metaethics, propose that moral facts are constituted by the idealized preferences of a community of advisors. Such accounts give rise to a preference-aggregation problem: namely, aggregating the advisors’ moral preferences. Do we have reason to believe that the advisors, albeit idealized, can still diverge in their rankings of a given set of alternatives? If so, what are the moral facts (in particular, the comparative moral goodness of the alternatives) when the advisors do diverge? …

The Modern Administrative State: Why We Have ‘Big Government’ And How To Run And Reform Bureaucratic Organizations, Sean Y. Sakaguchi

CMC Senior Theses

This work asserts that bureaucratic organization is not only an inevitable part of the modern administrative state, but that a high quality bureaucracy within a strongly empowered executive branch is an ideal mechanism for running government in the modern era. Beginning with a philosophical inquiry into the purpose of American government as we understand it today, this paper responds to criticisms of the role of expanded government and develops a framework for evaluating the quality of differing government structures. Following an evaluation of the current debate surrounding bureaucracies (from both proponents and critics), this thesis outlines the lessons and principles …

Armed Drones: An Age Old Problem Exacerbated By New Technology, Grant H. Frazier

Pomona Senior Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the history behind and the use of militarized drones in modern day conflicts, and to conclude whether the use of these machines, with special attention to the United States, is legal, ethical, and morally defensible. In achieving the aforementioned goals, shortcomings of current policy surrounding drone warfare will be highlighted, acting as the catalyst for a proposal for changes to be made to better suit legal, ethical, and moral considerations. The proposal of a policy to help us work with armed drones is due to the fact that this thesis acknowledges that …

Why Is It Good To Stop At A Red Light_ The Basis Of Authority And Obligation, Brian Mccall

Faculty Articles

Throughout history, some have questioned whether the authority exercised by some over others is consistent with human nature. Is it possible for a law made by one human being to bind the conscience of another, or is such a claim merely tyranny? If such a power to bind to laws made by humans is justified, what is its scope? The answers to these related questions explored in this Article are both descriptive and normative. This Article explains the nature of authority and the extent of the obligation to obey the law as well as explains how the architecture of natural …

Animal Mourning: Précis Of How Animals Grieve (King 2013), Barbara J. King

Animal Sentience

Abstract: When an animal dies, that individual’s mate, relatives, or friends may express grief. Changes in the survivor’s patterns of social behavior, eating, sleeping, and/or of expression of affect are the key criteria for defining grief. Based on this understanding of grief, it is not only big-brained mammals like elephants, apes, and cetaceans who can be said to mourn, but also a wide variety of other animals, including domestic companions like cats, dogs, and rabbits; horses and farm animals; and some birds. With keen attention placed on seeking where grief is found to occur and where it is absent …

Animal Sentience: The Other-Minds Problem, Stevan Harnad

Animal Sentience

The only feelings we can feel are our own. When it comes to the feelings of others, we can only infer them, based on their behavior — unless they tell us. This is the “other-minds problem.” Within our own species, thanks to language, this problem arises only for states in which people cannot speak (infancy, aphasia, sleep, anaesthesia, coma). Our species also has a uniquely powerful empathic or “mind-reading” capacity: We can (sometimes) perceive from the behavior of others when they are in states like our own. Our inferences have also been systematized and operationalized in biobehavioral science …

Legitimacy And The International Trade Regime, Thomas Christiano

San Diego Law Review

Issues of global justice and trade are usually dealt with in terms of what a just system of trade is like and what the distribution of income, opportunities, or welfare ought to be. But the question I address and explore is what a legitimate way of making decisions in the international realm is. This issue has arisen acutely in the case of the formation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other international institutions. In particular, many have complained that developed countries engaged in hard bargaining with developing countries in the conferences that led up to the formation of the …

How To Construct Global Justice, Aaron James

San Diego Law Review

Do social relationships between people give rise to any demands of social justice whatsoever? If they do, are they of any practical significance given the relationships living human beings are actually in? And, might they be so significant as to ground a theory of global justice—if not the whole of anything rightly called justice, then at least of the central range of issues in world politics? Finally, could that perhaps be what a political philosophy of global justice should mainly be about?

Here, in bare outline, is how the answers to all of these questions might be “yes,” at least …

From Theory To Practice I: Passing Judgments Of Exploitation, Mathias Risse, Gabriel Wollner

San Diego Law Review

In an earlier work, we offered a view on how trade should be treated within a theory of global justice. We proposed an account of exploitation to spell out the nature of the obligations that arise from trading. That account greatly benefits from a detailed development for concrete cases. The goal of this study and its close companion is to explore how our philosophical views help formulate judgments on a range of moral problems that arise from trading and to identify responsibilities of various actors and inform policy responses to instances of exploitation in trade.

To that end we use …

Two Conceptions Of Justice And The Dystopia Of Global Justice, Horacio Spector

San Diego Law Review

Political associations raise special questions of justice. Some authors contend that those special questions derive from characteristic features of the modern state. For instance, Thomas Nagel argues that two defining features of the political community justify associative redistributive duties that hold among its members but not among members and nonmembers. Those features are the fact that the political community exercises sovereign power over its members by resorting to the imposition of coercive rules and the fact that it exercises that power in the name of its members. In this paper, I will not challenge this assertion but will nonetheless argue …

Revising International Law: A Liberal Account Of Natural Resources, Fernando R. Tesón

San Diego Law Review

In this Article, I defend the view that natural resources originally belong to individuals who have legitimately established private property claims over them. Natural resources do not belong to a collective entity such as the people or the state. My argument is simple. Relying on the Lockean contractarian tradition, I argue that individuals must delegate any resource controlled by the state. This is because all powers of the state are, morally, delegated powers. A group’s claims over natural resources is entirely derivative of the original claims of its members. Only individuals can originally appropriate natural resources; only they have the …

The Liberal As An Enemy Of Queer Justice, Craig Schamel

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

Abstract

Liberalism as a historical mode of the political is the context in which the movement and ensuing struggle for queer justice emerged in most Western countries. The terminology, practices, tendencies, beliefs, ethics, laws, and patterns of political and social life which have been determined by this mode of the political, it is argued, are inimical to queer justice and render its achievement impossible. Liberalism as a mode of the political is approached from below, from knowledge gained in practical experience in queer groups which considered themselves revolutionary at least to some degree, and from the effects on such groups …

Vulnerability, Preventability, And Responsibility: Exploring Some Normative Implications Of The Human Condition, Daniel E. Wueste

Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Papers

Presented March 17, 2015. Papers presented for the Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Western Michigan University.

Hopeful Losers? A Moral Case For Mixed Electoral Systems, Loren King

Political Science Faculty Publications

Liberal democracies encourage citizen participation and protect our freedoms, yet these regimes elect politicians and decide important issues with electoral and legislative systems that are less inclusive than other arrangements. Some citizens inevitably have more influence than others. Is this a problem? Yes, because similarly just but more inclusive systems are possible. Political theorists and philosophers should be arguing for particular institutional forms, with particular geographies, consistent with justice.

Les démocraties libérales encouragent la participation citoyenne et protègent nos libertés. Pourtant, ces régimes élisent des politiciens et décident de problèmes importants via les systèmes électoral et législatif, qui sont moins …

Embodying A "New" Color Line: Racism, Anti-Immigrant Sentiment And Racial Identities In The "Postracial" Era, Grant J. Silva

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

This essay explores the intersection of racism, racial embodiment theory and the recent hostility aimed at immigrants and foreigners in the United States, especially the targeting of people of Latin American descent and Latino/as. Anti-immigrant and anti-foreigner sentiment is racist. It is the embodiment of racial privilege for those who wield it and the materiality of racial difference for those it is used against. This manifestation of racial privilege and difference rests upon a redrawing of the color line that is meant towards preserving exclusive categories of political membership. The charge of racism, however, is elided by the fact that …

Of Drones And Justice: A Just War Theory Analysis Of The United States' Drone Campaigns, Ethan A. Wright

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

No abstract provided.

Ebola Scare And Measles Resurgence: Mandatory Isolation/Quarantine And Vaccination, Mark C. Aita Md, Takeem T. Ragland Ma

Journal of Health Ethics

Public outcry for radical isolation and quarantine policies followed the first Ebola diagnosis in the United States when Eric Duncan, upon his return home Oct 2014 from West Africa, then in the midst of a catastrophic Ebola epidemic, tested positive for Ebola. Likewise, the Dec 2014 Disneyland measles outbreak unleashed an angry backlash against parents who refused to have their children vaccinated; and there was public momentum to repeal all legal exemptions to mandatory vaccination of school children. This paper presents an ethical and legal analysis to adjudicate the issue which is at stake in both controversies; namely the inherent …

The Search For Justice In A War-Filled World: Implementing The Just-War Theory, Hannah Schaefer

Augustana Center for the Study of Ethics Essay Contest

This paper is about addressing conflict using ethical methods. Strategies that are highlighted include nonviolent protests and behaviors before, during, and after engaging in a war with the end goal being justice and peace.

Autonomy, Residence, And Return, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This article argues that those unjustly displaced from a particular territory T cannot involuntarily lose their rights to reside there, or, as a consequence, their rights of return to it, even if they develop territorially grounded conceptions of the good where they now reside. The contrary position fails to accord the unjustly displaced the respect due to them in virtue of their personal autonomy. Facts commonly alleged to justify the supersession of rights of return to T only provide evidence that the unjustly displaced have abandoned their rights to reside there, or would do so if given a just opportunity …

Giving Up On Moral Truth Shall Set You Free: Walzer On Relativism, Criticism, And Toleration, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Morality, Michael Walzer contends, is plural, subjective, and concrete, a multitude of moralities or moral ways of life created over time by the members of distinct historically situated communities. This entails that we must abandon the familiar notion of moral truth, according to which at least some claims of the form ‘it is wrong to ϕ’ are true in virtue of their tracking or reflecting objective and universal moral principles binding on all moral agents as such. Many of Walzer’s critics take this implication to constitute a reductio ad absurdum refutation of Walzer’s relativist meta-ethics. But what precisely do we …

Blame And The Criminal Law, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Many retributivists appear to presume that the concept of blame that figures in their accounts of just punishment is the same one people employ in their interpersonal moral relationships. David Shoemaker contends that this presumption is mistaken. Moral blameworthiness, he maintains, tracks only the meaning of a person's action––his reasons for acting as he did––while criminal blameworthiness, which he equates with liability to punishment, tracks only the impermissibility of an agent's action. I contest the second of these two claims, and in doing so defend the retributivists’ presumption. First, I argue that the purpose of a criminal trial can be …

Decoding "Never Again", Sherry F. Colb

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article, Decoding “Never Again,” narrates its author’s experience as a child of two Holocaust survivors, one of whom participated in rescuing thousands of his fellow Jews during the war. Colb meditates on this legacy and concludes that her understanding of it has played an important role in inspiring her scholarship about (and ethical commitment to) animal rights. She examines and analyzes the ways in which analogies between the Holocaust and anything else can trigger people’s anger and offense, and she then draws a distinction between occasions when offense is an appropriate response to such analogies and when it need …