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Boston University School of Law

Articles 31 - 34 of 34

Full-Text Articles in Law and Philosophy

Blackmail: Property Right - 1993, Wendy J. Gordon Jan 1993

Blackmail: Property Right - 1993, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

It is not a paradox. For it to be a paradox, the following would have to be true: that when one is free to do one thing, or not to do it, one is also free to threaten to do it and sell that for money. But threat and sale are not even "lesser included acts" within doing and not doing; they are quite different from doing or not doing.

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Holmes And Brandeis: Libertarian And Republican Justifications For Free Speech, Pnina Lahav Jan 1988

Holmes And Brandeis: Libertarian And Republican Justifications For Free Speech, Pnina Lahav

Faculty Scholarship

Writing The Name of the Rose, observed Umberto Eco, made him aware of the "echoes of intertextuality." He discovered what "Homer, Rabelais and Cervantes have always known: . . .books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told."' The same applies to political and legal theories: they weave the past into the present. Thus, in articulating justifications for freedom of speech, one may look to modern works such as Milton or John Stuart Mill, or one may reach farther back to Aristotle, Plato or Pericles. The choice of intellectual sources as …

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Utility And Rights, David B. Lyons Jan 1982

Utility And Rights, David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

Two notions concerning the relation of rights to utilitarianism seem widely accepted, by both utilitarians and their critics. The first is that utilitarianism is hostile to the idea of moral rights. The second is that utilitarianism is capable of providing a normative theory about legal and other institutional rights. This chapter chiefly concerns the second thesis, and argues against it. But it also says something about the first. In previous writings I have challenged the first thesis, but here I shall suggest that it is sound. The upshot is that utilitarianism has a great deal of trouble accommodating rights.

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Principles, Positivism, And Legal Theory, David B. Lyons Dec 1977

Principles, Positivism, And Legal Theory, David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

A complete theory of law, writes Ronald Dworkin, tells us what law is and what it ought to be. The current "ruling" theory of law combines legal positivism with utilitarianism: it holds, first, that law is a set of explicitly adopted rules and, second, that law ought to maximize the general welfare. Dworkin rejects both branches of that theory. He argues that law contains "principles" as well as rules and that these principles cannot be traced to any explicit adoption or enactment. Dworkin argues further that the ruling theory neglects moral rights, which must be respected, he claims, even if …

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