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Full-Text Articles in Ethics and Political Philosophy

A Harmonious Legal System: True Justice Through Modernized Platonic Marxism, Cian R. Batarla Apr 2026

A Harmonious Legal System: True Justice Through Modernized Platonic Marxism, Cian R. Batarla

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

The Marxist theory of the law is underdeveloped compared to the rest of Marx and Engels works. This can be chalked up to legal systems merely being part of the superstructure, by which the ruling class use to maintain power. In this essay I push back on this notion that the rule of law can be dismissed, arguing that if Marx's true community is to be as such then the addition of a just legal system is not an issue. However, Marx's true community on its own is not enough to satisfy the inclusion of a legal system. Thus necessitating …

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Jurgen Habermas's Views On Legal Validity And Discourse Ethics: A Literature Review, Rika Febriani, Supartiningsih Supartiningsih, Sindung Tjahyadi Apr 2025

Jurgen Habermas's Views On Legal Validity And Discourse Ethics: A Literature Review, Rika Febriani, Supartiningsih Supartiningsih, Sindung Tjahyadi

Jurnal Civics: Media Kajian Kewarganegaraan

In modern states, law is often reduced to merely a tool of power. Many contemporary practices treat law as nothing more than a procedural requirement, disregarding its substantive values and the social conditions of society. This article discusses the validity of law within a political community from Habermas's perspective. According to him, the law must be discursive and stem from rational subjects capable of effective communication. The fundamental questions addressed are: how can law ideally be derived from norms within a political society? And how can law subsequently foster a democratic society? This article employs historical-factual methods, with primary sources …

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6. Mark: Sources And References, Matthew Lipman Jan 2025

6. Mark: Sources And References, Matthew Lipman

Secondary School Curriculum

This sequential bibliography matches the 1980 edition of Mark page by page. It contains both sources—works that influenced Matthew Lipman in writing the novel—and references to philosophical works he and Ann Margaret Sharp recommend to explore the novels’ philosophical themes.

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The Mythic Seeds Of Human Rights, Joshua Mackenzie Luna Jan 2025

The Mythic Seeds Of Human Rights, Joshua Mackenzie Luna

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

In this thesis, I propose a causal relationship between ancient societies’ mythic corpuses and their law codes. I begin by presenting the histories and historiographies of ancient Israel and Mesopotamia to highlight important themes in their development. Then, I place their creation and flood myths side-by-side for comparison, yielding key differences in the way each group conceptualizes human form, value, and purpose. Once these key differences have been established, I compare each group’s set of slave laws to demonstrate how each law code remains philosophically consistent with its respective set of myths and diametrically opposed to the set from the …

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Limitation For Liberty: A Commentary On Federalism And The Tenth Amendment, Riley Banker Dec 2024

Limitation For Liberty: A Commentary On Federalism And The Tenth Amendment, Riley Banker

Senior Honors Theses

The concept of Federalism is essential to the very survival of the United States. However, recent decisions by the Supreme Court have illustrated attempts by the federal government to expand its authority and undermine the balance of power created by Federalism. This thesis will explore the concept of Federalism to demonstrate how it can best be protected. First, this thesis will address the origins of Federalism. Second, it will show how the principles of Federalism are manifested within the founding documents of the United States. Finally, this thesis will analyze current events including Supreme Court cases to demonstrate a concerning …

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Creating A Just System Of Civil Recourse – Articulating The Controlled Instrumentalist Approach For Marginalized People, Rukmini Banerjee Jan 2024

Creating A Just System Of Civil Recourse – Articulating The Controlled Instrumentalist Approach For Marginalized People, Rukmini Banerjee

CMC Senior Theses

A system of civil recourse is a precondition for a just society. In this paper, I outline the ideal version of a system of civil recourse and analyze the accounts of various liberal philosophers to explain how a non-instrumental and mutual accountability theory of civil recourse best encapsulates its stated purpose. I analyze the American system of civil recourse, specifically tort law, and argue that it bypasses the threshold of tolerable injustice for marginalized people in the United States. Using Tommie Shelby’s framework in Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform, I argue that marginalized people are not obligated by …

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Is There Really Anything Wrong With That? An Aristotelian Analysis Of Duty, Luke J. Mcgrath Nov 2023

Is There Really Anything Wrong With That? An Aristotelian Analysis Of Duty, Luke J. Mcgrath

Honors College Theses

In the iconic Seinfeld series finale, Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer find themselves in a peculiar legal predicament when they mock a crime rather than intervene to help the victim. The show’s commitment to portraying reality, even in its finale, vividly demonstrates the potential consequences of a society lacking the legal obligation to aid others. This comical incident raises a thought-provoking question about the legitimacy of duty-to-act laws in the United States. This thesis examines the application of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics to the concept of duty-to-act laws and argues for the necessity and benefits of such laws in promoting a …

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The Consequence Of Final Causality: Competing Views Of Legal Teleology, Jonathan M. Dumdei Jan 2023

The Consequence Of Final Causality: Competing Views Of Legal Teleology, Jonathan M. Dumdei

Liberty University Journal of Statesmanship & Public Policy

Philosophy of law and legal jurisprudence have received recent attention in the United States due to the significant change in the makeup of the Supreme Court. Historical understanding of the legal philosophies that have influenced the U.S. and the ancient principles upon which they are built must of necessity be properly assessed. This thesis proposes that Aquinas’s conception of Natural Law as the basis for legal teleology provides a superior grounding for American jurisprudence than the theories of legal positivism and critical legal theory due to the superiority of Natural Law’s integration of ultimate final causes. Through a survey of …

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Civil Liability For Civil Disobedience, David Lefkowitz Jan 2023

Civil Liability For Civil Disobedience, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In January 2023, climate activists trespassed on the site of the German energy firm RWE’s Garzweiler coal mine to protest against its plans to expand operations there. The police eventually removed the protestors (including Greta Thunberg), many of whom were charged with committing criminal offenses. A few weeks after the occupation, RWE announced plans to seek compensation from the protestors for the injuries they inflicted on the firm, which included damage to vehicles and other equipment.[1] Should the law permit it to do so? More generally, should a liberal-democratic State hold civil disobedients legally liable to compensate the private …

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Against The Death Penalty, Charles Jessup Apr 2022

Against The Death Penalty, Charles Jessup

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

My thesis is an argument against the death penalty. Given that public support for the death penalty in America is at a half-century low (according to the Pew Research Center), the timing could not be more appropriate to examine the death penalty. This research project had a two-step approach: first, ethical theory-based arguments for and against the death penalty were examined. Following that ethical theory-based examination, real-world statistics were applied to these theories to test where they stand in modern society. The findings contained in this research project point to a clear reality that the death penalty in America is …

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Legal Purgatory: Why Some Animals Are Neither Persons Nor Property, Sharisse Kanet Feb 2021

Legal Purgatory: Why Some Animals Are Neither Persons Nor Property, Sharisse Kanet

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

All animals with non-borderline sentience are deserving of certain legal considerations independent of their use and relationship to human beings. That is, all sentient beings should have some rights. Given the current organization of the U.S. legal system, which divides all entities into property or persons, it is not surprising that animals are relegated to property status. I put forth a proposal to fix this whose central suggestion is that we create a third legal designation, legal patient, into which all non-person sentient animals (those which do not properly belong on either current category) would fit. These animals would receive …

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Socrates And The Divine Mission Of Political Friendship, Ronahn I. Clarke Jan 2021

Socrates And The Divine Mission Of Political Friendship, Ronahn I. Clarke

Honors Theses

Plato is widely regarded as an authoritarian political thinker on account of Socrates’ endorsement of rule by philosopher kings in the Republic. Yet the Republic should not be mistaken for a political treatise or the entirety of Socrates’ political theorizing. Each of the Socratic dialogues is concerned with the political endeavour of reorienting souls within communities of souls toward virtue via philosophical discussion. This project examines the Lysis, the Gorgias, the Symposium, the Republic, and other dialogues in the context of the philosophical mission Socrates establishes in the Apology. Socrates’ philosophical work expresses a …

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A Rhetorical Analysis Of Opening Statements In Trial: Reconsidering The Classical Canon Of Invention, Andrew Chandler May 2019

A Rhetorical Analysis Of Opening Statements In Trial: Reconsidering The Classical Canon Of Invention, Andrew Chandler

Undergraduate Theses

This analysis of 21 opening statements probes at current persuasive practices employed by trial attorneys through the lens of mainstream legal advice and an expanded definition of rhetorical invention – one which includes both discovery and creation. An evaluation of such practice reveals the utility, and furthermore the duty of the advocate, to draw upon an expanded realm of available arguments.

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The [Not So] Hidden Curriculum Of The Legalist State In The Book Of Lord Shang And The Han-Fei-Zi, Brandon R. King Jul 2018

The [Not So] Hidden Curriculum Of The Legalist State In The Book Of Lord Shang And The Han-Fei-Zi, Brandon R. King

Comparative Philosophy

This paper loosely draws some parallels between the experience of a subject in a so-called “Legalist” state with that of a contemporary student in Western schooling today. I explore how governance in the Book of Lord Shang and the Hanfeizi can be interpreted as pedagogy. Defining pedagogy in a relatively broad sense, I investigate the rationalizations for the existence of the state, the application of state mechanisms, and even the concentration of the ruler’s power all teach subjects habits, attitudes, and sensibilities in a similar fashion to what Philip Jackson called the “hidden curriculum”. Through his framework of “crowds, praise, …

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The Prospects For Change: The Question Of Justice In A Law & Society Framework, Michael W. Raphael Jun 2016

The Prospects For Change: The Question Of Justice In A Law & Society Framework, Michael W. Raphael

Graduate Student Publications and Research

What is the law and society framework and where has it gotten us? A student in a classroom might raise their hand and offer "understanding legal pluralism" as a possible answer. However, the conceptual problem with legal pluralism is the coexistence of potentially conflicting bases of justification. Given this, desiring to understand how the law shapes the structural underpinnings of whichever "legal" phenomena and its "ongoing transformation", is nevertheless an immense achievement that stops short of its underlying goal – the achievement of human dignity through human rights. For example, to talk about 'multi-stakeholder consultations' and other pithy phrases that …

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Freedom, Benefit And Understanding: Reflections On Laurence Claus’S Critique Of Authority, John Finnis Dec 2014

Freedom, Benefit And Understanding: Reflections On Laurence Claus’S Critique Of Authority, John Finnis

San Diego Law Review

With wide-ranging and illuminating determination, Law’s Evolution and Human Understanding offers a refutation of the illusion of authority. No one, it rightly contends, has the right to be obeyed. Still less, as it correctly says, do any persons have the right that their say so be obeyed because they said so. Given the book’s stipulative definition of “authority,” these truths entail that authority is an illusion, and provide some important premises for a plausible further conclusion or pair of conclusions: it is harmful, both in practice and in theory, to say that some person or body has authority (“the rule …

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The State Of Nature X: Why Leave? A Preface On The State Of Nature Theory, Zachary S. Stirparo Apr 2013

The State Of Nature X: Why Leave? A Preface On The State Of Nature Theory, Zachary S. Stirparo

Senior Honors Theses

Great minds have addressed the issue of forming a polity, dating back to Plato. Yet, most of these great minds, such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, argue for the need to escape the state of nature into a civil form of government. However, after taking the three essential elements of man that these philosophers all comment on, self-preservation, reason, and will, a new state of nature model is created that is stronger. It is stronger because of its definition of man and the analytic inferences that flow from that definition. Therefore, the state of nature theory does …

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Reconciling Positivism And Realism: Kelsen And Habermas On Democracy And Human Rights, David Ingram Jan 2013

Reconciling Positivism And Realism: Kelsen And Habermas On Democracy And Human Rights, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

It is well known that Hans Kelsen and Jürgen Habermas invoke realist arguments drawn from social science in defending an international, democratic human rights regime against Carl Schmitt’s attack on the rule of law. However, despite embracing the realist spirit of Kelsen’s legal positivism, Habermas criticizes Kelsen for neglecting to connect the rule of law with a concept of procedural justice (Part I). I argue, to the contrary (Part II), that Kelsen does connect these terms, albeit in a manner that may be best described as functional, rather than conceptual. Indeed, whereas Habermas tends to emphasize a conceptual connection between …

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Ethics, Law, And The Science Of Fish Welfare, Colin Allen Aug 2012

Ethics, Law, And The Science Of Fish Welfare, Colin Allen

Between the Species

Fish farming is one of the fastest growing sectors of agriculture, attracting considerable attention to the question of whether existing farming regulations and animal welfare laws are adequate to deal with the expanding role of fish in feeding humans. The role of fish as model organisms in scientific research is also expanding -- a majority of research biology departments now keep zebrafish for the purposes of genome biology, and they are used widely used for basic neuroscience research. However, due to their diversity and distance from mammalian biology, fish pose difficult questions for the application of legal and ethical principles …

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Guantánamo Bodies: Law, Media, And Biopower, Cary H. Federman, Dave Holmes Oct 2011

Guantánamo Bodies: Law, Media, And Biopower, Cary H. Federman, Dave Holmes

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The idea of the Guantánamo detainee as a Muselmann, the lowest order of concentration camp inmates, contains within it important implications for the new understanding of sovereignty in the era of Guantánamo, in an age of exception. The purpose of this article is to explain the status of those who are detained at Guantánamo Bay. Stated broadly, in assessing that status, we will emphasize the connection between the altered meaning of sovereignty that has accompanied the placing of prisoners in an American penal colony in Cuba and the biopolitical status of the prisoners who reside there. More particularly, we …

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Republicanism And The Foundations Of Criminal Law, Richard Dagger Jan 2011

Republicanism And The Foundations Of Criminal Law, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

This chapter makes a case for the republican tradition in political philosophy as a theory that can provide a rational reconstruction of criminal law. It argues that republicanism offers a reconstruction of criminal law that is both rational and plausible. In particular, it shows that republicanism can help us to make sense of three important features of criminal law: first, the conviction that crime is a public wrong; second, the general pattern of development of criminal law historically; and third, the public nature of criminal law as a cooperative enterprise. To begin, however, it explains what republicanism is and why …

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Moral Limits Of Dworkin's Theory Of Law And Legal Interpretation, David B. Lyons Apr 2010

Moral Limits Of Dworkin's Theory Of Law And Legal Interpretation, David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

At the foundation of Justice for Hedgehogs is a commitment to moral objectivity – the doctrine that there are right answers to moral questions. This nicely complements Dworkin’s legal theory, which holds that right answers to legal questions depend on right answers to moral questions. Without the doctrine of moral objectivity, Dworkin could not reasonably maintain, as he does, that law provides determinate answers to legal questions.

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Trends. Implications Of War And Peace For The Morality, Ethics, And Legality Of Killing And Incarceration, Ibpp Editor Nov 2002

Trends. Implications Of War And Peace For The Morality, Ethics, And Legality Of Killing And Incarceration, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article provides a perspective for the controversy surrounding the appropriateness of killing and incarceration during a war on terrorism with global reach.

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Slavery And The Sudan: Can Good Works Be Good?, Ibpp Editor Mar 1999

Slavery And The Sudan: Can Good Works Be Good?, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article focuses on the consequences of attempts to free slaves and abolish slavery in the Sudan.

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Play Fair With Punishment, Richard Dagger Apr 1993

Play Fair With Punishment, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

If we want to provide a justification for legal punishment, then, we must answer two distinct questions: (1) What justifies punishment as a social practice? and (2) What justifies punishing particular persons? The principle of fair play is an especially attractive theory of punishment, I shall agree, because it offers plausible and compelling answers to both these questions. I shall also suggest that there is a third question - How should we punish those who commit crimes? - that fair play cannot answer without help from other sources.

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The Connection Between Law And Morality: Comments On Dworkin, David B. Lyons Jan 1986

The Connection Between Law And Morality: Comments On Dworkin, David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

Our discussions yesterday seemed haunted by a contrast--never quite formulated--between Natural Law and Legal Positivism. The standard interpretation turns on the idea of a "necessary connection" between law and morality. Positivism has often been understood to hold, and Natural Law to deny, that there can be unjust laws.

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Harm, Utility, And The Obligation To Obey The Law, Richard Dagger Jan 1982

Harm, Utility, And The Obligation To Obey The Law, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

In a recent essay, "Political Obligation", R. M. Hare sets out a utilitarian account of the obligation to obey the law which he believes to be immune to an objection often brought against such accounts. In what follows I shall briefly review this objection and Professor Hare's response to it; than I shall go on to argue that Hare's response, ingenious as it is, fails to defeat the objection. Hare's argument is instructive nonetheless, for its failure tells us something about wrongs and harm as well as utility and political obligation.

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Need, Necessity, And Political Obligation, David B. Lyons Feb 1981

Need, Necessity, And Political Obligation, David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

In Law and Obedience, Professor Woozley denies that there is an obligation to obey the law just because it is the law. Professor Honoré disagrees. He does so, however, not by offering small criticisms of what he calls "the skeptical philosophy," but by giving us a vigorous and original argument for the more conventional, conformist view.

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5. Social Inquiry: Instructional Manual To Accompany 'Mark', Matthew Lipman, Ann Margaret Sharp Jan 1980

5. Social Inquiry: Instructional Manual To Accompany 'Mark', Matthew Lipman, Ann Margaret Sharp

Secondary School Curriculum

The task of social studies as a discipline is to focus students’ already developed thinking skills upon the conceptual foundation of the social sciences. Students will think about these underlying concepts if they can talk about them, and they will talk about what they perceive as controversial or problematic. This, then, is what Mark and Social Inquiry aim to do: to identify selected root issues in the social sciences and expose to students the conflicting concepts at the heart of each issue.

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4. Mark (Novel), Matthew Lipman Jan 1980

4. Mark (Novel), Matthew Lipman

Secondary School Curriculum

The high school has been vandalized, and Mark is arrested at the scene of the crime. He claims he is a “victim of society.” But what is society? What forces hold it together or work to pull it apart? These are questions to which Mark and his classmates address themselves. What they seek are ways of evaluating social institutions, rules and values, so as to determine how well society is able to live up to the ideals which, at one time or another, have been set for it. They pay particular attention to the nature of law and crime, tradition, …

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