Fortifying The Self-Defense Justification Of Punishment, Zac Cogley
Sep 2017
Fortifying The Self-Defense Justification Of Punishment, Zac Cogley
Zac Cogley
David Boonin has recently advanced several challenges to the self-defense justification of punishment. Boonin argues that the self-defense justification of punishment justifies punishing the innocent, justifies disproportionate punishment, cannot account for mitigating excuses, and does not justify intentionally harming offenders as we do when we punish them. In this paper, I argue that the self-defense justification, suitably understood, can avoid all of these problems. To help demonstrate the self-defense theory’s attraction, I also develop some contrasts between the self-defense justification, Warren Quinn’s better known ‘auto-retaliator’ argument, and desert-based justifications of punishment. In sum, I show that the self-defense justification of …
Group Rights: A Defense, David Ingram
Sep 2017
Group Rights: A Defense, David Ingram
David Ingram
Human rights belong to individuals in virtue of their common humanity. Yet it is an important question whether human rights entail or comport with the possession of what I call group-specific rights (sometimes referred to as collective rights), or rights that individuals possess only because they belong to a particular group. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) says they do. Article 15 asserts the right to nationality, or citizenship. Unless one believes that the only citizenship compatible with a universal human rights regime is cosmopolitan citizenship in a world state – a conception of citizenship that is not countenanced …
Finding The Sovereign In Sovereign Immunity: Lessons From Bodin, Hobbes, And Rousseau, David Schraub
Dec 2016
Finding The Sovereign In Sovereign Immunity: Lessons From Bodin, Hobbes, And Rousseau, David Schraub
David Schraub
The doctrine of “sovereign immunity” holds that the U.S. government cannot be sued without its consent. This is not found in the Constitution’s text; it is justified on philosophical grounds as inherent to being a sovereign state: a sovereign must be able to issue commands free from constraint. The sources of this understanding of sovereignty—Hobbes, Bodin, and others—are, in turn, condemned by opponents of sovereign immunity as absolutists whose doctrines are incompatible with limited, constitutional government. This debate, and thus the usual conception of sovereign immunity, rests on a fundamental mistake. Hobbes and his peers were careful to avoid the …
Daredevil: Legal (And Moral?) Vigilante, Stephen E. Henderson
Dec 2016
Daredevil: Legal (And Moral?) Vigilante, Stephen E. Henderson
Stephen E Henderson
In 1964, the comic world was introduced to its first physically disabled practicing attorney: Matt Murdock. Initially a proud graduate of "State College" and later more impressively pedigreed as a graduate of either Columbia or Harvard Law, Murdock supplemented his day job as attorney with a side of vigilante justice as Daredevil.
In 2003, Murdock became the only attorney superhero to appear as the title character in a movie. A truly awful movie, yes, but a movie all the same. And then in 2015, thanks to the talents of Drew Goddard, Murdock became the star of a terrific television series. …
