Law Commons^™

Panel 2: Restitution Law, Andrew Kull, Dan Priel, Benjamin Geva, Poonam Puri

Dan Priel

PANEL II: RESTITUTION LAW: Poonam Puri, Associate Dean, Osgoode Hall Law School; Speaker: Andrew Kull, Professor, Boston University, "A Consideration Which Happens to Fail"; Speaker: Dan Priel, Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School, "Justice and Unjust Enrichment"; Discussant: Benjamin Geva, Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School.

Are Jurisprudential Debates Conceptual?: Some Lessons From Democratic Theory, Dan Priel

Dan Priel

The dominant view among legal philosophers is that jurisprudential debates about the nature of law are conceptual. In this article I challenge this view. I do so by comparing these debates to debates about the justification of democracy and showing that the arguments found in both are often very similar. I demonstrate that in both domains, there are arguments on one side that explain an institution (either law or democracy) in terms of its ability to help people lead a better life, and there are arguments on the other side that highlight the value of these institutions in promoting political …

The Justice In Unjust Enrichment, Dan Priel

Dan Priel

The question of what justice has to do with the law of unjust enrichment (if it has anything to do with it at all) has in recent years come to occupy scholars who have sought to explain the theoretical foundations of this area of law and its relationship with other branches of private law. A popular answer has been that the law of unjust enrichment, like the rest of private law, instantiates the politically neutral norms of corrective justice. In this article, I argue that this is not the case in two distinct senses. First, even on its own, corrective …

Jurisprudence And (Its) History, Dan Priel, Charles L. Barzun

Dan Priel

It is not obvious that philosophers and historians of law should take much interest in the scholarly enterprises of the other. Many legal philosophers understand their task as one of clarifying the meaning of such familiar legal concepts as “right,” “duty,” or “law” by offering analyses of them that purport to be general, abstract, and timeless. Meanwhile, historians tend to be suspicious of speculative claims ungrounded in fact and so often prefer to focus on the concrete, particular features of actual legal regimes. But surface appearances can deceive. Unlike some other areas of philosophy, the subject matter of jurisprudence is …

British Politics, The Welfare State, And Tort Liability Of Public Authorities, Dan Priel

Dan Priel

There has been a notable shift in the scope of negligence liability of public authorities in the Post War period. Notably there was a trend toward restriction of liability in the 1980s. This essay tries to explain why this happened not by focusing on changing legal formulas but by examining the political context of the law in this area. I begin the essay by demonstrating how changes in the attitudes toward the role of the state have led to the changes in the law in this area. I then go on to examine the impact of Thatcher’s ascent to power. …

The Place Of Legitimacy In Legal Theory, Dan Priel

Dan Priel

In this essay I argue that in order to understand debates in jurisprudence one needs to distinguish clearly between four concepts: validity, content, normativity, and legitimacy. I show that this distinction helps us, first, make sense of fundamental debates in jurisprudence between legal positivists and Dworkin: these should not be understood, as they often are, as debates on the conditions of validity, but rather as debates on the right way of understanding the relationship between these four concepts. I then use this distinction between the four concepts to criticize legal positivism. The positivist account begins with an attempt to explain …

Risk Taking And Force Protection, David Luban, Dan Priel, François Tanguay-Renaud

Dan Priel

David Duban, University Professor and Professor of Law and Philosophy at Georgetown Law, defends Michael Walzer’s reconstruction of the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE) and its implications for the risks that just warriors must take to minimize harm to civilians.

Respondent: Dan Priel, Osgoode Hall Law School

Discussion Of John Tasioulas' 'Or 'Emet Lecture: Is Dignity The Foundation Of Human Rights?, John Tasioulas, Louis-Philippe Hodgson, Dan Priel

Dan Priel

Follow-up seminar on John Tasioulas' ‘Or ‘Emet Lecture, delivered on Thursday, March 10, 2011. Part of the Legal Philosophy Between State and Transnationalism Seminar Series.

Respondents: Louis-Philippe Hodgson York Philosophy and Dan Priel, Osgoode Hall Law School.

Book Review: Justice In Robes By Ronald Dworkin (2006), Dan Priel

Dan Priel

Since the 1960's Ronald Dworkin has been arguing for a particular account of law that he believed was both explanatorily superior to the one offered by competing theories, and also the basis for normative arguments for producing right answers to legal questions. Justice in Robes collects Dworkin's most recent essays on this subject and thus provides the appropriate opportunity for assessing the legal theory of one of the more influential legal philosophers. In this Review I seek to offer a clearer account than appears in the book itself of Dworkin's project, and in this way offer a measured assessment of …

One Right Answer?: The Meta Edition, Dan Priel

Dan Priel

Legal philosophers concerned with the nature of law have focused much of their attention to the relationships between law and morality. Much less attention has been paid to the question of the relationship between law and politics. In this essay I examine this question by comparing the way the relationship between law and politics is understood in two legal systems usually thought to be fairly similar - the American and the British. I argue, first, that this relationship is understood in fundamentally different ways in the two legal systems; second, that this difference is reflected in the legal philosophers of …