Law and Philosophy Commons^™

Beyond Borders: Martin Luther King, Jr., Africa, And Pan Africanism, Jeremy I. Levitt

Journal Publications

This modest essay was a work of love in honor of Henry J. Richardson III, my dear brother, friend, mentor, and father in international law. Hank is universally recognized as the Dean of Black international law scholars and lawyers in the United States (U.S.), Africa, and beyond. He has single-handedly mentored three generations of international lawyers, influenced three generations of international legal scholarship, and established the Black International Tradition (BIT), which "stretches back to the very origins of our nation, preceding even the Constitution." His works on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s (King) leadership, authority, and ministry as a global …

Regulating Human Germline Modification In Light Of Crispr, Sarah Ashley Barnett

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Changing Course, Sergio J. Campos

Articles

No abstract provided.

Sources In Legal Positivist Theories, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The debate about positivism in general legal theory or in the international legal scholarship manifests so many different, if not conflicting, meanings of positivism—even among legal positivists themselves—that the debate about legal positivism has proved almost unfathomable and unintelligible.

No other approach to theorizing international law is more closely associated with and dependent upon the development of an account of its sources than is positivism. The explanation for this is a simple and familiar one: if there is any thesis regarding (p. 324) law that we can uncontroversially associate with the label ‘legal positivism’, it is the view that a …

What Makes A Social Order Primitive? In Defense Of Hart’S Take On International Law, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The widespread antipathy to Hart's description of international law as a simple or primitive social order, one that lacks a rule of recognition and therefore does not qualify as a legal system, rests on two misunderstandings. First, the absence of a division of labor in identifying, altering, applying, and enforcing law is as much, if not more, central to Hart's understanding of what makes a society primitive as is the absence of any secondary rules at all. Second, it is primarily in terms of the presence of such a division of labor and the implications it has for the ontology …

Intention And Value, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

In previous writings, I joined those who take the view that action with an intention is an action for (what the agent takes to be) a reason, where whatever value there is in the action is a reason for it. This paper sketches the role of reasons and intentions in leading to action with an intention. Section 1 explains that though belief in the value of the intended action is not an essential constituent of intentions, nevertheless when humans act with an intention they act in the belief that there is value in the action. Section 2 explains the relative …

Can Moral Principles Change?, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

The paper considers the main arguments against the possibility that basic normative principles can change, and finds them wanting. The principal argument discussed derives from the claim that normative considerations are intelligible, and therefore that they can be explained, and their explanations presuppose the prior existence of basic normative principles. The intelligibility thesis is affirmed but the implication that basic change is impossible is denied. Subsumptive explanations are contrasted with explanations by analogy. Later in the paper, other objections are considered more briefly: that normative properties are queer, that they are unconnected to the rest of reality, and therefore cannot …

Freedman On Machiavelli, Philip C. Bobbitt

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter links Freedman’s work to that of Niccolò Machiavelli through constructivist realism, which is an apposite term for the two thinkers, as the unchanging sense of human nature interacts with ever changing context, and humans have to adapt to new circumstances, but with the limitations imposed on them both by themselves or situations. Despite their biographical parallels, it is the similarities and complementarities in their thinking that are more profound reasons to associate them. Both wrestle with the challenge of understanding the ways and the extent to which it is possible to anticipate and to shape the future to …

Intention And Motivation, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

What is the role of intentions in the actions intended? What do they contribute, and how do they contribute to the occurrence of the intended actions?

The paper will offer an account of acting with an intention and of having an intention to act. It will not offer an account of intentional action, merely suggesting that when intentional actions are not actions done with an intention, their explanation as intentional relates to that of actions with intentions, showing how like them and unlike them they are. Motivation will be discussed mainly to distinguish its role in leading to action from …

On The Moral Significance Of Sacrifice, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

The paper offers a few reflections on moral implications of making sacrifices and of possible duties to make sacrifices. It does not provide an exhaustive or a systematic account of the subject. There are too many disparate questions, and too many distant perspectives from which to examine them to allow for a systematic let alone an exhaustive account, and too many factual issues that I am not aware of. Needless to say, the observations that follow are in part stimulated by the popularity of some views that are mistaken. I will not however examine any specific view or account of …

Review Of The Choice Theory Of Contracts, Nicolas Cornell

Reviews

This book aims to provide a new approach to thinking about the role of contract law in a liberal state. The fundamental idea is that the law should affirmatively facilitate citizens' autonomy by creating and sustaining various different types of contractual relationships so that citizens have the option to choose among them. The authors start from the idea that "bargaining for terms is not the dominant mode of contracting . . . the mainstay of present-day contracting is the choice among types" (2-3). We choose to relate as employees or independent contractors, married or just cohabiting, merchants selling goods or …

Afterword - Agape And Reframing, James Boyd White

Other Publications

In a provocative essay, philosopher Jeffrie Murphy asks: 'what would law be like if we organized it around the value of Christian love, and if we thought about and criticized law in terms of that value?'. This book brings together leading scholars from a variety of disciplines to address that question. Scholars have given surprisingly little attention to assessing how the central Christian ethical category of love - agape - might impact the way we understand law. This book aims to fill that gap by investigating the relationship between agape and law in Scripture, theology, and jurisprudence, as well as …

The Presumptions Of Classical Liberal Constitutionalism, Matthew J. Lindsay

All Faculty Scholarship

Richard A. Epstein’s The Classical Liberal Constitution is an imposing addition to the burgeoning body of legal scholarship that seeks to “restore” a robust conception of economic liberty and limited government to its rightful place at the center of American constitutionalism. Legislators and judges operating within a “classical liberal conception of government,” Epstein explains, would approach skeptically “[a]ll [regulatory] proposals that deviate from the basic common law protections of life, liberty, and property.” Classical liberal constitutional courts would thus renounce the toothless rational basis review of the post-New Deal “progressive mindset,” and instead subject to exacting scrutiny the government’s “purported …

Law And Recognition-- Towards A Relational Concept Of Law, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

Law is plural. In all but the simplest situations multiple laws overlap—national laws, subnational laws, supranational laws, non-national laws.

Our jurisprudential accounts of law have mostly not taken this in. When we speak of law, we use the singular. The plurality of laws is, at best an afterthought. This is a mistake. Plurality is built into the very reality of law.

This chapter cannot yet provide this concept; it can serve only develop one element. That element is recognition. Recognition is amply discussed in the context of Hart’s rule of recognition, but this overlooks that recognition matters elsewhere, too. My …

Why The State?, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

I offer two questions for the price of one: Why do so many jurisprudential theories focus on the state? And what is it about the State that gives it a special place in our social arrangements? I do not mean these to address all aspects of states. They are questions about the law or legal systems of states.

We have to be open to a negative answer to the second question, thus being critical of jurisprudential theories that focus more or less exclusively on the state. That need not deny that states have their own legal systems. It could merely …

Truth And Politics: A Symposium On Peter Simpson's Political Illiberalism: A Defense Of Freedom., Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

There is no more important question in thinking about life-and actually living-in political community than whether it is to be permeated by, and purposefully oriented around, the main truths about human flourishing. It is at least paradoxical that, precisely when the state and its law and political life are shaping people's lives more and more, the professed roots of all this influence are growing thinner, more shallow. Lawmakers who profess and in many cases even think they should be "neutral" about values are more involved with how persons' lives go than, perhaps, ever before.

Of course, any community which has …