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Full-Text Articles in Law

Unparadoxical Liberalism, Andrew Koppelman Mar 2017

Unparadoxical Liberalism, Andrew Koppelman

San Diego Law Review

Larry Alexander argues that liberalism is internally incoherent because it contains a paradox: it is committed to toleration, but if it tolerates illiberal ideas and practices it betrays itself. The paradox does not exist. Liberalism aims to tolerate as much diversity as it can consistent with the preservation of the liberal project. It has distinctive reasons to tolerate illiberal ideas, since it aims to be adopted by the citizenry consciously and with a full understanding of the alternatives. How much diversity can, in practice, be tolerated is a contingent question dependent on the facts of any particular time and place. …


Legal Moralism Revisited, Michael S. Moore Mar 2017

Legal Moralism Revisited, Michael S. Moore

San Diego Law Review

I shall use this occasion mostly to clarify what the legal moralist theory of criminal legislation proclaims to be the proper limits on the reach of criminalization of behavior. But preliminarily, here in this Introduction, I want to remind readers of how the principle is motivated. First, recall what a principle of criminal legislation is. It consists of two closely related items. First of all, it is a principle that sets forth the proper aims of a legislature when that legislature drafts the prohibitions and requirements that constitute the “special part” of the substantive criminal law. It is, second, a …


The Harm Principle, Legal Moralism, And The "Disintegration Thesis": On Lord Devlin Being Unable To Keep Playing The Smuggling Game, Miguel Nogueira De Brito Mar 2017

The Harm Principle, Legal Moralism, And The "Disintegration Thesis": On Lord Devlin Being Unable To Keep Playing The Smuggling Game, Miguel Nogueira De Brito

San Diego Law Review

The topic of the legal enforcement of morals, understood as the “question of the legitimacy of ‘vice crimes’ or ‘victimless crimes,’” is a special facet of the more general issue of the limits of the law. It is the subject of the long-standing debate as to whether law—all law—can be used as a support for moral conceptions as such, or, more generally, whether there are limits on the use of law to enforce morality, as when it is claimed that the law must remain neutral as between different views of the good, be they religious or otherwise. Whether understood in …


Why Liberal Tolerance, Rightly Understood, Is Coherent And Defensible, William A. Galston Mar 2017

Why Liberal Tolerance, Rightly Understood, Is Coherent And Defensible, William A. Galston

San Diego Law Review

One of the most familiar criticisms of liberal democracy is that it cannot defend itself against its enemies while remaining true to its principles. This criticism is odd as well as unjust because theorists regarded as arch-liberals offer compelling reasons to reject it. . .


An Unjust Dogma: Why A Special Right To Religion Wrongly Discriminates Against Non-Religious Worldviews, Kenneth Einar Himma Mar 2017

An Unjust Dogma: Why A Special Right To Religion Wrongly Discriminates Against Non-Religious Worldviews, Kenneth Einar Himma

San Diego Law Review

In this Article, I will argue that a special right to religious freedom is not morally warranted, and that hence such a right illicitly discriminates against non-religious worldviews. The principal argument here is that there is no adequate reason to think that religious worldviews implicate any interests distinct from those implicated by non-religious worldviews. While it is certainly true that religious worldviews warrant, as a matter of political morality, all the protections that non-religious worldviews receive, there is good reason to question what seems to have become a dogma among Western nations—namely, that religious worldviews deserve special protection....


A Transcendental Argument For Liberalism, Samuel C. Rickless Mar 2017

A Transcendental Argument For Liberalism, Samuel C. Rickless

San Diego Law Review

Liberalism is the view that the state should not, except on mutually justifiable grounds, coerce a society’s citizens to adopt, support, or follow some particular comprehensive conception of the good. So understood, a liberal state, by definition, permits each citizen a zone of freedom delimited by her own understanding of the ingredients of a happy life. Liberalism, as a normative theory governing state–citizen (and, indirectly, citizen–citizen) relations, is opposed by various forms of totalitarianism, including theocracy and communism. A theocratic state is one that imposes a particular religious form of life on its citizens, and thereby restricts their freedom to …


Liberalism And Tolerance, William Voegeli Mar 2017

Liberalism And Tolerance, William Voegeli

San Diego Law Review

I began by raising the possibility that tolerance is minor issue, having no bearing on whether liberalism works out or makes sense. I conclude by noting that it is a central question, for liberalism and politics in general. Tolerance is important because intolerance is important. “Anything Goes” is one of Cole Porter’s best songs, but is unlikely to become any country’s national anthem. The questions of what doesn’t go, and why, and how to prevent it from going any further, explain a great deal about the political ideologies of our era, as well as the premises on which social orders …


Alexander On Koppelman On Alexander, Larry Alexander Mar 2017

Alexander On Koppelman On Alexander, Larry Alexander

San Diego Law Review

In my book Is There a Right of Freedom of Expression?, I argued that liberalism, to the extent it is defined by a commitment to freedom of illiberal speech, illiberal religions, and illiberal associations, is at its core paradoxical. For, I argued, if liberalism is the correct political philosophy, it must regard illiberal thought and its manifestations in action and policy as fundamentally mistaken. And these mistaken illiberal views cannot be deemed by the liberal to have value as views, except perhaps for whatever instructive value they might have in getting people to see the truth of liberalism. When such …


The Machiavellian Case Against Legal Moralism, Luis Pereira Coutinho Mar 2017

The Machiavellian Case Against Legal Moralism, Luis Pereira Coutinho

San Diego Law Review

In this paper, “legal moralism” is to be understood in a wide sense as the promotion, outright coercive, or otherwise, of conceptions of the good by the state—assuming in a Kelsenian way that any state action means legal action. Under consideration is the possibility of excluding the good from the bounds of the law under a theory of political right of Machiavellian origin. Anticipating the conclusion, this paper will seek to verify whether the Machiavellian case is the only one excluding the good from the bounds of the law in a coherent manner, regardless of its merits and the inherent …


Dignity, Rights, And The Role Of Consent In German Criminal Law, Kapsaski Ifigeneia Mar 2017

Dignity, Rights, And The Role Of Consent In German Criminal Law, Kapsaski Ifigeneia

San Diego Law Review

This Article addresses the issue of protecting human dignity as a ground and a threshold for criminalization. Human dignity can be either a limit to the scope of criminal law or a reason that justifies criminalization. This inquiry will be conducted through the referral to two German cases regarding consensual conduct. The first concerns consensual maiming and killing of a person and the second concerns consensual incest between two adult siblings. This Article does not further examine questions on the ontology of consent; neither does it examine questions regarding validity of consent as rational and voluntary. The issue discussed here …


Revisiting The Hart-Devlin Debate: At The Periphery And By The Numbers, James Allan Mar 2017

Revisiting The Hart-Devlin Debate: At The Periphery And By The Numbers, James Allan

San Diego Law Review

We are not yet at the stage when trying to say something new about the well-known Hart-Devlin debate is like attempting to give a novel take on the Old Testament, or on William Shakespeare’s plays—or life for that matter—or even on the music of The Beatles. But then again those analogies are not wholly misplaced, at least not within legal philosophical circles in the common law world. So I was tempted to try my hand at some other topic falling under the aegis of “legal moralism” and leave Professor Hart and Lord Justice Devlin well enough alone. However, for good …