Law and Philosophy Commons^™

Agency And Luck, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

Advancing an account of responsibility which is based on the functioning of our rational capacities, the paper revisits some central aspects of the moral luck puzzle. It proposes a new variant of Williams’ agent-regret, but concludes that its scope does not coincide with cases of moral luck. It then distinguishes different ways in which the factors beyond our control feature in our engagement with the world which show how the guidance principle (we are responsible for actions guided by our rational powers) recognises a narrower range of situations of moral luck than is often supposed, allowing to distinguish between responsibility …

Post-Modern Meditations On Punishment: On The Limits Of Reason And The Virtues Of Randomization, Bernard E. Harcourt, Alon Harel, Ken Levy, Michael M. O'Hear, Alice Ristroph

Faculty Scholarship

In this Criminal Law Conversation (Robinson, Ferzan & Garvey, eds., Oxford 2009), the authors debate whether there is a role for randomization in the penal sphere - in the criminal law, in policing, and in punishment theory. In his Tanner lectures back in 1987, Jon Elster had argued that there was no role for chance in the criminal law: “I do not think there are any arguments for incorporating lotteries in present-day criminal law,” Elster declared. Bernard Harcourt takes a very different position and embraces chance in the penal sphere, arguing that randomization is often the only way to avoid …

Personal Sovereignty And Normative Power Skepticism, Jody S. Kraus

Faculty Scholarship

In "The Correspondence of Contract and Promise," I claim that contract scholars have mistakenly presumed that they can assess the correspondence between contract and promise without first providing a theory of self-imposed moral responsibility that explains and justifies the promise principle. To illustrate the dependence of correspondence accounts of contract law on a theory of self-imposed moral responsibility, I demonstrate how a "personal sovereignty" account of individual autonomy explains how and why, contrary to existing correspondence theories, promissory responsibility corresponds to the rights and duties recognized by contract. Personal sovereignty recognizes the fundamental right of individuals not only to choose …

On The Value Of Distributional Equality, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

The paper returns to the question whether equality in distribution is valuable in itself, or, if you like, whether it is intrinsically valuable. Its bulk is an examination of two familiar arguments against the intrinsic value of distributional equality: the levelling down objection and the objection that equality violates some person-affecting condition, in that its realisation does not improve the lot of people.

Reason, Reasons And Normativity, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

All normative phenomena are normative in as much as, and because, they provide reasons or are partly constituted by reasons. This makes the concept of a reason key to an understanding of normativity. Believing that, I will here present some thoughts about the connection between reasons and Reason and between Reason and normativity.

On The Guise Of The Good, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

I will provisionally take the Guise of the Good thesis to consist of three propositions: (1) Intentional actions are actions performed for reasons, as those are seen by the agents. (2) Specifying the intention which makes an action intentional identifies central features of the reason(s) for which the action is performed. (3) Reasons for action are such reasons by being facts which establish that the action has some value. From these it is said to follow that (4) Intentional actions are actions taken in, and because of, a belief that there is some good in them. I will examine reasons …

The Practice Of Value – Reply, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

The privilege of having three sets of extensive and hard-hitting comments on one's work is as welcome as it is rare, and especially so on this occasion as the lectures were, for me, but the first (well, not entirely first) stab at a subject I hope to explore at greater length. The reflections that follow will respond to some of the criticisms, but will not be a point by point reply. I will use the occasion to clarify some obscurities in the lectures, and to contrast my view with some of my critics' own positions. I will proceed thematically, starting …

The Argument From Justice, Or How Not To Reply To Legal Positivism, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Robert Alexy wrote a book whose avowed purpose is to refute the basic tenets of a type of legal theory which 'has long since been obsolete in legal science and practice'. The quotation is from the German Federal Constitutional Court in 1968. The fact that Prof Alexy himself mentions no writings in the legal positivist tradition [in English] later than Hart's The Concept of Law (1961) may suggest that he shares the court's view. The book itself may be evidence to the contrary. After all why flog a dead horse? Why write a book to refute a totally discredited …

Can There Be A Theory Of Law?, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

The paper deals with the possibility of a theory of the nature of law as such, a theory which will be necessarily true of all law. It explores the relations between explanations of concepts and of the things they are concepts of, the possibility that the law has essential properties, and the possibility that the law changes its nature over time, and that what is law at a given place and time depends on the culture and concepts of that place and time. It also considers the possibility of understanding the institutions, such as the law, of cultures whose concepts …

An Answer To The Question: "What Is Poststructuralism?", Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

What is poststructuralism? It has always struck me as odd that so many critical theorists are reluctant to offer an answer to this question. In this essay, I unpack the term and provide a synoptic answer. Poststructuralism, I suggest, is a style of critical reasoning that focuses on the moment of ambiguity in our systems of meaning, as a way to identify the ethical choices that we make when we overcome the ambiguity and move from indeterminacy to certainty of belief in our efforts to understand, interpret, and shape our environment. Post-structuralism concentrates on the moment when we impose meaning …

Transparency And Determinacy In Common Law Adjudication: A Philosophical Defense Of Explanatory Economic Analysis, Jody S. Kraus

Faculty Scholarship

Explanatory economic analysis of the common law has long been subject to deep philosophical skepticism for two reasons. First, common law decisions appear to be cast in the language of deontic morality, not the consequentialist language of efficiency. For this reason, philosophers have claimed that explanatory economic analysis cannot satisfy the transparency criterion, which holds that a legal theory's explanation must provide a plausible account of the relationship between the reasoning it claims judges actually use to decide cases and the express reasoning judges provide in their opinions. Philosophers have doubted that the economic analysis has a plausible account of …

“The Inalienable Rights Of The Beasts”: Organized Animal Protection And The Language Of Rights In America, 1865-1900, Susan Pearson

Studio for Law and Culture

Contemporary animal rights activists and legal scholars routinely charge that state animal protection statutes were enacted, not to serve the interests of animals, but rather to serve the interests of human beings in preventing immoral behavior. In this telling, laws preventing cruelty to animals are neither based on, nor do they establish, anything like rights for animals. Their raison d’etre, rather, is social control of human actions, and their function is to efficiently regulate the use of property in animals. The (critical) contemporary interpretation of the intent and function of animal cruelty laws is based on the accretion of …

The Problem Of Authority: Revisiting The Service Conception, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

The problem I have in mind is the problem of the possible justification of subjecting one's will to that of another, and of the normative standing of demands to do so. The account of authority that I offered, many years ago, under the title of the service conception of authority, addressed this issue, and assumed that all other problems regarding authority are subsumed under it. Many found the account implausible. It is thin, relying on very few ideas. It may well appear to be too thin, and to depart too far from many of the ideas that have gained currency …

The Myth Of Instrumental Rationality, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

My main aim is to explain the normative character of the phenomena that are commonly discussed when theoretical writers discuss instrumental rationality and instrumental reasons. The discussion will assume that there are forms of practical normativity, of practical reasons, which are not instrumental in nature. The question central to the inquiry is what, if any, normative difference does adopting or having an end make? For example, are there instrumental reasons and, if there are, how do they relate to having ends? Are instrumental reasons distinctive kinds of reasons, whose normativity differs in its underlying rationale from that of, say, moral …

Personal Practical Conflicts, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

This preliminary reflection about practical conflicts confronting single agents does little to solve the problems conflicts create. Rather, it attempts to explain what conflicts are and what questions they raise. I suggest that we have two distinct notions of single-agent conflicts reflecting two distinct theoretical questions. The first concerns the possibility of there being a right action in conflict situations. It is the question of whether and, if so, how reasons deriving from different concerns or affecting different people can be of comparable strengths. The second concerns a sense that there is something unfortunate about conflicts and that when facing …

Collective Guilt And Collective Punishment, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

Attitudes toward collective guilt in the Middle East require us to take a closer look at guilt in the Bible. It turns out the text of Genesis is conflicted. Some passages support a theory of guilt linked with the inevitability of cleansing and punishment; other passages appear to treat guilt as a psychological state that might be cured by a confession of sins. The tension is important today in trying to understand whether the collective guilt of nations should also entail collective punishment.

From Rethinking To Internationalizing Criminal Law, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

Writing Rethinking Criminal Law ("Rethinking") was a gamble. No one had ever written a serious book on comparative criminal law – in English or in any other language. No one had ever addressed English-speaking readers with the argument that some other system of legal thought – espoused by a nation defeated in a major war just thirty years before – had a superior literature on criminal law and a more refined way of thinking about the structure of criminal offenses. No one had tried to present the system of criminal law as though it were a species of …

The Role Of Well-Being, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

"Well-being" signifies the good life, the life which is good for the person whose life it is. I have argued that well-being consists in a wholehearted and successful pursuit of valuable relationships and goals. This view, a little modified, is defended , but the main aim of the article is to consider the role of well-being in practical thought. In particular I will examine a suggestion which says that when we care about people, and when we ought to care about people, what we do, or ought to, care about is their well-being. The suggestion is indifferent to who cares …

Incorporation By Law, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

My purpose here is to examine the question of how the law can be incorporated within morality and how the existence of the law can impinge on our moral rights and duties, a question (or questions) which is a central aspect of the broad question of the relation between law and morality. My conclusions cast doubts on the incorporation thesis, that is, the view that moral principles can become part of the law of the land by incorporation.

Philosophy Of Contract Law, Jody S. Kraus

Faculty Scholarship

This article identifies a set of methodological commitments that help to explain the methodological differences between autonomy (deontic) and economic contract theories that have opposing views about the nature of law and legal theory. It begins with the discussion of the four methodological issues that divide contemporary autonomy and economic theories of contract. The dispute over the relative priority of the normative and explanatory enterprises of contract theory may simply reflect the different theoretical goals of deontic and economic theorists. These intellectual origins may explain not only the different priorities of deontic and economic contract theories, but their different conceptions …

About Morality And The Nature Of Law, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

In support of my longstanding claim that the traditional divide between natural law and legal positivist theories of law, the present paper explores a variety of necessary connections between law and morality which are consistent with theories of law traditionally identified as positivist.

Law And Judicial Duty, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

Two hundred years ago, in Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice Marshall delivered an opinion that has come to dominate modern discussions of constitutional law. Faced with a conflict between an act of Congress and the U.S. Constitution, he explained what today is known as "judicial review." Marshall described judicial review in terms of a particular type of "superior law" and a particular type of "judicial duty." Rather than speak generally about the hierarchy within law, he focused on "written constitutions."

He declared that the U.S. Constitution is "a superior, paramount law" and that if "the constitution is superior to any …

The Fault Of Not Knowing, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

Despite the outpouring of interest in tort and criminal theory over the last thirty years, not much progress has been made toward understanding the basic concepts for analyzing liability. Common law theorists of torts and criminal law tend to accept the conventional distinction between objective and subjective standards and the view that objective negligence is not really fault in the way that subjective negligence is. The author's view is that this distinction between objective and subjective standards is misunderstood and that, in fact, so-called objective negligence is a test of fault or culpability in the same way that subjective standards …

The Storrs Lectures: Liberals And Romantics At War: The Problem Of Collective Guilt, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

Somehow we in the West thought the age of war was behind us. After nuking Hiroshima, after napalming Vietnam, we had only distaste for the idea and the practice of war. The thought of dying for a noble cause, the pursuit of honor in the name of patria, brotherhood in arms – none of this appealed to us anymore. "I hate war and so does Eleanor," opined FDR in the oft-repeated lyrics of Pete Seeger. War became a subject for ironic disdain. As Tom Lehrer caught the mood of the 1960s: "We only want the world to know that …

The Methodological Commitments Of Contemporary Contract Theory, Jody S. Kraus

Faculty Scholarship

Autonomy and economic theories of contract seem to provide incompatible accounts of contract law. In this Chapter, I argue that what appear to be first-order disagreements over particular contract doctrines are really implicit second-order disagreements reflecting the divergent methodological commitments of autonomy and economic theories. I argue that autonomy theories accord priority to the normative project of justifying existing contract doctrine, treat contract law as consisting in the plain meaning of doctrine, require contract theory to explain the distinctive character of contract law, and take the ex post perspective in adjudication. In contrast, economic theories accord priority to the positive …

Reasoning With Rules, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

What is special about legal reasoning? In what way is it distinctive? How does it differ from reasoning in medicine, or engineering, physics, or everyday life? The answers range from the very ambitious to the modest. The ambitious claim that there is a special and distinctive legal logic, or legal ways of reasoning, modes of reasoning which set the law apart from all other disciplines. Opposing them are the modest, who claim that there is nothing special to legal reasoning, that reason is the same in all domains. According to them, only the contents of the law differentiate it from …

The Liberal Commons, Hanoch Dagan, Michael A. Heller

Faculty Scholarship

Following the Civil War, black Americans began acquiring land in earnest; by 1920 almost one million black families owned farms. Since then, black rural landownership has dropped by more than 98% and continues in rapid decline – there are now fewer than 19,000 black-operated farms left in America. By contrast, white-operated farms dropped only by half, from about 5.5 million to 2.4 million. Commentators have offered as partial explanations the consolidation of inefficient small farms and intense racial discrimination in farm lending. However, even absent these factors, the unintended effects of old-fashioned American property law might have led to the …

On The Socratic Maxim, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

Many years ago John Finnis and I became interested in the Socratic view that it is better to suffer wrong than to do it. My interest was triggered by Anselm Müller's lecture on the subject given at Balliol at that time. Finnis discussed the issue in his Fundamentals of Ethics, where Müller's influence on him is acknowledged. At the time John Finnis and I debated the maxim and had a lengthy correspondence about it, but we did not convince each other. Now when I return to the issue, I can no longer remember the position I then took, except …

Three Limitations Of Deliberative Democracy: Identity Politics, Bad Faith, And Indeterminancy, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

In Democracy and Disagreement, Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson elaborate a liberal political style designed to complement the substantive liberalism they and others have developed in recent years. The style they portray is deliberative, and its essence is the appeal to principle.

Disenfranchisement As Punishment: Reflections On The Racial Uses Of Infamia, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

The practice of disenfranchising felons, though decreasing, is still widespread. In this Article, Professor George Fletcher reflects on the use of disenfranchisement as punishment, the lack of a convincing theoretical justification for it, and its disproportionate impact on the African.American community. Fletcher presents a number of powerful arguments against the constitutionality of the practice, but he emphasizes that there is a deeper problem with disenfranchisement as punishment: It reinforces the branding of felons as an "untouchable" class and thus helps to prevent their effective reintegration into our society.