This book focuses upon the perennial question of the existence and nature of an obligation to obey the law. Leading writers have, at one time or another, emphasized considerations such as gratitude, 'divine ordering, ' prudence, contract, autonomy, and utility in seeking to justify, or to deny any justification for, some sort of obligation to obey the positive law. The book provides relevant selections from a sampling of the historical approaches to legal obligation taken by writers such as Plato, (...) Augustine, Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Thoreau, Bentham, Marx and Engels, and Martin Luther King, Jr. These classical discussions are augmented by critical questions and commentary, by independent discussions of the question of legal obligation by a wide range of contemporary writers, and by relevant judicial cases discussing matters such as conscientious objection and civil disobedience. (shrink)

Legal and Political Philosophy , edited by Enrique Villanueva, is the first volume in the series Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy , published by Rodopi also under his editorship. It contains six original essays by leading political philosophers and philosophers of law , along with critical papers on those essays, and replies. This is cutting edge work that elicits sharp responses already as it is published, with the debate joined as the authors reply. Social, (...) class='Hi'>Political, and Legal Philosophy is a new book series, edited by Enrique Villanueva, and published by Rodopi Publishers as part of Rodopi Philosophical Studies . The series will publish collections of new essays on topics in social or political or legal philosophy. New volumes will be published approximately every year or every other year. (shrink)

_Legal and Political Philosophy_, edited by Enrique Villanueva, is the first volume in the series _Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy_, published by Rodopi also under his editorship. It contains six original essays by leading political philosophers and philosophers of law, along with critical papers on those essays, and replies. This is cutting edge work that elicits sharp responses already as it is published, with the debate joined as the authors reply. _Social, Political, and Legal (...) Philosophy_ is a new book series, edited by Enrique Villanueva, and published by Rodopi Publishers as part of _Rodopi Philosophical Studies_. The series will publish collections of new essays on topics in social or political or legal philosophy. New volumes will be published approximately every year or every other year. (shrink)

In the last decades, regional and global integration processes have made the traditional state-centred view of law less and less obvious. Recent discussions revolve around how to conceptually comprehend, critically reflect on and reasonably control these new developments in the global legal arena. The essays in this volume, written by young Central and Eastern European legal theorists and political scientists, contribute to ongoing discussions in our post-national era. The chapters include conceptual analyses, historical and comparative examples, as (...) well as normative discussions in legal theory, ethics, moral philosophy, constitutional theory, EU law and international relations. (shrink)

This thematic philosophical introduction to the central topics of ancient legal and political philosophy places particular emphasis on their relevance to contemporary philosophical debates. The book provides a philosophical reconstruction, analysis and critical assessment of the main theories and arguments of legal and political philosophers of the classical period. Their influences on and differences from contemporary thinking in legal and political philosophy are also explored. These connections illustrate how we can fruitfully engage with the (...) arguments and theories of ancient legal and political philosophy today. (shrink)

There has always been much controversy surrounding property rights in legal and political philosophy. Thinkers such as Plato, Locke, Kant, Hegel and Marx have all offered different views on the idea of property. This collection of essays, written by some of the most eminent scholars in the field, examines the most central issues of property theory from a variety of perspectives. The essays discuss whether property may be dissipated or used imprudently with impunity, and analyse how a person's (...) property should be distributed after death. They survey the economic landscape of intellectual property and show that Locke's celebrated justification for private property falters when it comes to copyrights and patents. They also demonstrate how important it is that institutions of property be carefully justified. The variety and originality of these essays are evidence that the theory of property is one of the most exciting areas of intellectual inquiry in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

Now available Open Access! See the Bloomsburycollections URL below. -/- Correct bibliographical information is as follows: Gottfried Achenwall, _Natural Law: A Translation of the Textbook for Kant's Lectures on Legal and Political Philosophy_, edited by Pauline Kleingeld, translated by Corinna Vermeulen, with an Introduction by Paul Guyer. London: Bloomsbury, 2020. -/- As the first translation into any modern language of Achenwall’s Ius naturae, from the 1763 edition used by Immanuel Kant, this is an essential work for anyone interested (...) in Kant, the natural law tradition or the history of legal and political theory. For over twenty years, Kant used this book as the basis for his lectures on natural law. It influenced his legal and political philosophy as well as his ethics, and it is indispensable for understanding Kant’s Feyerabend Lectures on Natural Law and his Metaphysics of Morals. -/- Articulating his theory of natural law with clear definitions and precise distinctions, Achenwall offers a lucid account that includes instructive comparisons with the work of Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf, Wolff and others. The volume also contains an Introduction by the eminent Kant scholar Paul Guyer, comparing Achenwall’s theory to the legal and political philosophy of Kant’s Doctrine of Right, and a concordance correlating Achenwall’s Natural Law to Kant’s Feyerabend Lectures on Natural Law. (shrink)

In this masterful work, both an illumination of Kant's thought and an important contribution to contemporary legal and political theory, Arthur Ripstein gives a comprehensive yet accessible account of Kant's political philosophy. In addition to providing a clear and coherent statement of the most misunderstood of Kant's ideas, Ripstein also shows that Kant's views remain conceptually powerful and morally appealing today.

"An important contribution to contemporary jurisprudential debate and to legal thought more generally, Just Interpretations is far ahead of currently available work."--Peter Goodrich, author of Oedipus Lex "I was struck repeatedly by the clarity of expression throughout the book. Rosenfeld's description and criticism of the recent work of leading thinkers distinguishes his work within the legal theory genre. Furthermore, his own theory is quite original and provocative."--Aviam Soifer, author of Law and the Company We Keep.

'The genocide in Rwanda showed us how terrible the consequences of inaction can be in the face of mass murder. But the conflict in Kosovo raised equally important questions about the consequences of action without international consensus and clear legal authority. On the one hand, is it legitimate for a regional organization to use force without a UN mandate? On the other, is it permissible to let gross and systematic violations of human rights, with grave humanitarian consequences, continue unchecked?'. (...) This book is a comprehensive, integrated discussion of 'the dilemma' of humanitarian intervention. Written by leading analysts of international politics, ethics, and law, it seeks, among other things, to identify strategies that may, if not resolve, at least reduce the current tension between human rights and state sovereignty. This volume is an invaluable contribution to the debate on all aspects of this vital global issue. (shrink)

Property, or property rights, remains one of the most central elements in moral, legal, and political thought. It figures centrally in the work of figures as various as Grotius, Locke, Hume, Smith, Hegel and Kant. This collection of essays brings fresh perspective on property theory, from both legal and political theoretical perspectives, and is essential reading for anyone interested in the nature of property. Edited by two of the world's leading theorists of property, James Penner and (...) Michael Otsuka, this volume brings together essays which consider, amongst other topics, property and public law, the importance of legal forms in property theory, whether use or exclusion are most essential to our understanding of property, distributive justice, Lockean and Grotian theories, the common ownership of the Earth, and Confucian ideas of property. (shrink)

John Coggon argues that the important question for analysts in the fields of public health law and ethics is 'what makes health public?' He offers a conceptual and analytic scrutiny of the salient issues raised by this question, outlines the concepts entailed in, or denoted by, the term 'public health' and argues why and how normative analyses in public health are inquiries in political theory. The arguments expose and explain the political claims inherent in key works in public (...) health ethics. Coggon then develops and defends a particular understanding of political liberalism, describing its implications for critical study of public health policies and practices. Covering important works from legal, moral, and political theory, public health, public health law and ethics, and bioethics, this is a foundational text for scholars, practitioners and policy bodies interested in freedoms, rights and responsibilities relating to health. (shrink)

Well-known for his contribution to the juristic world, Professor Ronald Dworkin was an outstanding legal philosopher of his generation. This volume celebrates the thoughts of Ronald Dworkin on dignity. The contributors have critically engaged with different perspectives of Dworkin's thoughts on dignity. The aim is to shed light on juridical and moral contemporary conundrums such as the role of dignity in constitutional contexts in India, and the understanding of dignity as either a foundation of human rights or as a (...) supra value that illuminates other values and rights. (shrink)

Human Dignity The mercurial concept of human dignity features in ethical, legal, and political discourse as a foundational commitment to human value or human status. The source of that value, or the nature of that status, are contested. The normative implications of the concept are also contested, and there are two partially, or even wholly, … Continue reading Human Dignity →.

Hans Kelsen refused to develop a democratic theory of the basic norm. Given that he expounded a strong distinction between law and politics as two separate scientific disciplines he consistently argued against any attempt to politicize legal science and corrupt its object of cognition. As a result, there has been very little discussion of the basic norm in relation to his democratic theory. This article attempts to fill this gap by tracing the relationship between the basic norm and democracy (...) in Kelsen’s legal and political writings. More precisely, it maps Kelsen’s seminal distinction between autonomy and heteronomy onto his reflections on constitutional making and probes the anti-democratic implications of his theory of the basic norm as they undermine the normative foundations of democratic theory. The article concludes by addressing the question of whether it is possible to articulate a theory of the democratic ground norm, of democratic foundings with a normative content, by proposing the idea of an immanent, performative basic norm as the source of validity of a democratic constitutional order. (shrink)

Feinberg is one of the leading philosophers of law of the last forty years. This volume collects recent articles, both published and unpublished, on what he terms "basic questions" about the law, particularly in regard to the relationship to morality. Accessibly and elegantly written, this volume's audience will reflect the diverse nature of Feinberg's own interests: scholars in philosophy of law, legal theory, and ethical and moral theory.

In a recent comment on H.L.A. Hart’s ‘Postscript’ to The Concept of Law, Ronald Dworkin claims that the meaning of legal and political concepts may be understood by analogy to the meaning of natural kind concepts like ‘tiger’, ‘gold’ and ‘water’. This article questions the efficacy of Dworkin’s claims by challenging the use of natural kinds as the basis for a semantic theory of legal and political concepts. Additionally, in matters of value there is no methodological (...) equivalent to the scientific method. Thus, there is little hope of finding hidden essences to explain the meaning of legal and political concepts. Finally, even if there are natural kinds, Dworkin’s arguments for their efficacy in jurisprudence are problematic and unpersuasive. The problem for Dworkin is that his embrace of natural kinds undermines the ‘fit’ side of the fit/justification model of adjudication that lies at the heart of his theory of law. (shrink)

This paper offers an example of what may be called ‘an aesthetic history of legal and political thought’. Such a task engages in theorising historically the features of aesthetic traditions that enable and further normative inquiry, i.e. an exploration of the norms and values that might contribute to the good life and the common good. The three features offered in this paper as useful to identifying such aesthetic traditions are communality and interactivity, experimentalism, and exemplarity. The paper shows (...) how each of these features is present, in particular ways, in one specific aesthetic tradition, namely the declamatory tradition. Tracing the declamatory tradition back to Ancient Rome, and examining its influence in the English Renaissance, especially in Sir Thomas More’s response to Lucian’s declamatory thema, Tyrannicide, the paper argues that the particular ways in which declamatory practice combines the above three features enables those engaged in it to pursue normative inquiry. The paper argues that the integration of these three features is especially visible in one aspect of declamatory practice, namely the introduction and exchange of colores, i.e. changes in the narrative, introduced by declaimers and their audiences, which shed light on the possible motivation of a character, and thereby also invited shifts in affective allegiance and evaluative perspective. The paper argues that it is in large part through such introduction and exchange of colores that the declamatory tradition enables and furthers normative inquiry, and thus also offers a good reason for including the declamatory tradition in ‘an aesthetic history of legal and political thought’. (shrink)

The paper is focused on the criticisms that theorists of political constitutionalism raise against legal constitutionalism, especially with regard to the idea of representation and political sovereignty. At the same time, the intention is to reconstruct the debate between legal and political constitutionalism in contemporary liberalism, starting from the so-called counter-majoritarian difficulty. This debate concerns two different approaches: the political one rejects the idea of judicial review by the Supreme Court because it may establish (...) a possible rule of the judges (Michelman; Dworkin). It defends the role of Parliament in constitutional matters, in contrast with the role of the Supreme Court, inasmuch as – according to them – it is not open to political participation. Parliament is considered the only place in which we can exercise our constitutional power and in which our rights could be adequately protected (Bellamy; Waldron; Tushnet; Goldoni). On the other hand, legal constitutionalism upholds the idea of judicial review, defending the role of the Supreme Court as “exemplar of public reason” (Rawls 1993). This article tries to answer to three fundamental questions about constitutional democracy under the banner of political liberalism: 1. What do we mean by counter-majoritarian difficulty? 2. What is the answer that legal and political model of constitutionalism give to this question? 3. What is the role of constitutional courts in democratic regimes and what is their authority within the State? (shrink)

This work is a controversial collection of interrelated papers investigating and arguing about issues of concern to lawyers and politicians today. MacCormick combines a scholarly concern with leading thinkers such as John Locke, Lord Stair, Adam Smith and David Hume, John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and Patrick Atiyah, and stringently argued view of questions of political obligation, civil liberty, and legal rights.

This book initiates a discussion among scholars in rhetoric and hermeneutics in many areas of the humanities. Twenty leading thinkers explore the ways these two powerful disciplines inform each other and influence a wide variety of intellectual fields. Walter Jost and Michael J. Hyde organize pivotal topics in rhetoric and hermeneutics with originality and coherence, dividing their book into four sections: Locating the Disciplines; Inventions and Applications; Arguments and Narratives; and Civic Discourse and Critical Theory. For readers across the humanities, (...) the book demonstrates the usefulness of rhetorical and hermeneutic approaches in literary, philosophical, legal, religious, and political thinking. (shrink)

The volume brings together a collection of original papers on some of the main tenets of Joseph Raz's legal and political philosophy: Legal positivism and the nature of law, practical reason, authority, the value of equality, incommensurability, harm, group rights, and multiculturalism. James Griffin and Yael Tamir raise questions concerning Raz's notion of group rights and its application to claims of cultural and political autonomy, while Will Kymlicka and Bernhard Peters examine Raz's theory of multicultural society. (...) Lukas Meyer investigates the applicability of the notion of harm in the intergenerational context. Other papers are devoted to fundamental theoretical tenets of Raz's work. Hillel Steiner and Andrei Marmor examine Raz's account of value pluralism and incommensurability in light of what these authors consider to be goods whose equal distribution must be valued for its own sake. Robert Alexy and Timothy Endicott discuss traditional issues of jurisprudence and legal philosphy with special attention to Raz's contribution. Rüdiger Bittner, Bruno Celano, and J. E. Penner discuss and criticize aspects of Raz's theory of practical reason. Jeremy Waldron presents a critique of Raz's interpretation of authority.This volume concludes with a chapter by Joseph Raz in which he responds to arguments in the foregoing essays. (shrink)

The volume brings together a collection of original papers on some of the main tenets of Joseph Raz's legal and political philosophy: Legal positivism and the nature of law, practical reason, authority, the value of equality, incommensurability, harm, group rights, and multiculturalism.

The present article discusses the “peace versus justice” dilemma in international criminal justice through the lenses of the respective legal theories of Judith Shklar and Hannah Arendt—two thinkers who have recently been described as theorists of international criminal law. The article claims that in interventions carried out by the International Criminal Court, there is an ever-present potentiality for the “peace versus justice” dilemma to occur. Unfortunately, there is no abstract solution to this problem, insofar as ICC interventions will in (...) some cases be conducive while in others, they will be deleterious to peace. If a tension between peace and justice arises in a particular case, the article asserts, the former must be prioritised over the latter. Such a prioritisation, however, requires a vision of the ICC as a flexible actor of world politics which is situated at the intersection of law, ethics and politics, rather than a strictly legalistic view of the court. Ultimately, then, the present article seeks to probe whether the legal and political theories of Shklar and Arendt—in isolation, but ultimately also in combination—support such a flexible vision of the ICC. (shrink)

This book includes contemporary Jewish political practice, and both systematic and historical treatments of issues in Jewish political theory and legal thought.

Challenging the assumptions of modern political and legal philosophy, this book presents a historical account of the development of thinking about justice and political obligations.

This doctoral thesis analyzes the systematic role of Kant’s conception of happiness in his moral, legal and political theory. Although many of his conclusions and arguments are directly or indirectly influenced by his conception of human happiness, Kant’s underlying assumptions are rarely overtly discussed or given much detail in his works. Kant also provides different and apparently incompatible definitions of happiness. This research explores the domains of Kant’s practical philosophy in which his conception of happiness plays a systematic (...) role: the relation between the natural need of human beings to pursue happiness and the ends-oriented structure of the human will; Kant’s anti-eudaimonism in ethical theory; Kant’s claim that we have an indirect duty to promote our own happiness and the problem that under certain circumstances, the indeterminacy of happiness makes it not irrational to choose short term satisfaction at the costs of one’s overall, long term happiness, given Kant’s conception of non-moral choice as expectation of pleasure; Kant’s justification of the duty to adopt the happiness of others as our ends and the latitude and eventual demandingness of this duty; finally, since Kant also subsumes subsistence needs and welfare under the concept of happiness of individuals, I also engage with the question of state provision for the poor in the Kantian Rechtsstaat and explore Kant’s conception of equity or fairness as an alternative to the traditional minimalist and the welfare interpretations of the Kantian state. (shrink)

There is much discourse and focus on the social determinants of health, but undergirding these multiple intersecting and interacting determinants are legal and political determinants that have operated at every level and impact the entire life continuum. The United States has long grappled with advancing health equity via public law and policy. Seventy years after the country was founded, lawmakers finally succeeded in passing the first comprehensive and inclusive law aimed at tackling the social determinants of health, but (...) that effort was short-lived. Today the United States is faced with another fork in the road relative to the advancement of health equity. This article draws on lessons from history and law to argue that researchers, providers, payers, lawmakers and the legal community have a moral, economic and national security imperative to address not only the negative outcomes of health disparities, but also the imbalance of inputs resulting from laws and policies which fail to employ an equity lens. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 7, Page 937-955, September 2022. Reasonableness is a complex notion recently developed by legal and political theorists. John Rawls’s famous proposal of ‘reasonableness as reciprocity’ requires careful testing in the light of several criteria arising from legal doctrine and adjudication. I enquire into this variety of concepts in search of a common thread that makes sense of the use of the same concept in diverse contexts. I assume the normative thrust (...) of reasonableness as an institutional and an individual virtue the basic core of which derives from Aristotelian phronesis. However, this double aspect of reasonableness betrays its major complexity that I try to shape through the help of two categories: subjective agency and objective context. The upshot of my enquiry will be that of showing that we can use another model, alternative to Rawls’s and better able to make sense of the variety of legal and ethical uses: Von Wright’s reasonableness as ‘the right way of living’. (shrink)

Corporate scandals reveal the need for deep transformation of management education so as to profess and promote moral leadership. AACSB and business schools bear partial fault for the recent situation. New 2003 AACSB accreditation standards do highlight business ethics. But the 2003 standards undermine moral, legal and political education by defining “ethics” narrowly and tending to signal pure “infusion” in place of any independent foundation coursework. This paper states a case for an independent foundation course, required universally at (...) undergraduate and graduate levels of business or management education, addressing businesses in societies, legal environment of business and business ethics. Independent foundation instruction by specialists should be followed universally by systematic infusion of these areas throughout business curricula. Neither standalone coursework nor pure infusion is satisfactory. The paper discusses roles, content and location of a required foundation course—followed by systematic infusion—for moral, legal and political education of future managers. (shrink)

Hans Kelsen refused to develop a democratic theory of the basic norm. Given that he expounded a strong distinction between law and politics as two separate scientific disciplines he consistently argued against any attempt to politicize legal science and corrupt its object of cognition. As a result, there has been very little discussion of the basic norm in relation to his democratic theory. This article attempts to fill this gap by tracing the relationship between the basic norm and democracy (...) in Kelsen’s legal and political writings. More precisely, it maps Kelsen’s seminal distinction between autonomy and heteronomy onto his reflections on constitutional making and probes the anti-democratic implications of his theory of the basic norm as they undermine the normative foundations of democratic theory. The article concludes by addressing the question of whether it is possible to articulate a theory of the democratic ground norm, of democratic foundings with a normative content, by proposing the idea of an immanent, performative basic norm as the source of validity of a democratic constitutional order Key Words: Hannah Arendt • basic norm • constitu ere • constitutional making • democracy • immanent norm • Hans Kelsen. (shrink)

This paper argues that the writings of Hans Kelsen deserve more attention from those engaged in the debate on secularization and political theology. His lifelong struggle with various forms of legal‐political metaphysics is an identifiable thread in many of his writings. Kelsen’s concern with the theological‐political issues found in the theory of the state (Staatslehre) is far from being marginal. Kelsen claims that his theory aims at resolving the traditional dualism of law and state prevailing in (...) the Staatslehre and contributes to an “uncompromising destruction of one of the most effective ideologies of legitimacy.” Kelsen maintains that the contents of this “ideology of legitimacy” derive from both political metaphysics and the deep‐seated ancient ways of thinking on nature and society. In order to illustrate this thesis, I propose calling this phenomenon “totemism of the modern state.”. (shrink)

This paper provides a synopsis of the human rights enforcement in Bangladesh, which marks its 50 years in 2021 since its independence. After a theoretical background on how human rights are perceived as legal and political instruments, it critically discusses human rights provisions and explores the legal and institutional frameworks on human rights enforcement in Bangladesh—(re)construed in 50 years (1971–2021). Finally, it divulges the controversies in human rights enforcement and a roadmap to address them by making some (...) suggestions: multiple legislative, administrative, and judicial reforms are required to tackle human rights abuses to ensure punishment for the abusers and restitution for the victims. The paper concludes with the notion that the positive will of the relevant stakeholders (legislature, executive, and judiciary) is the key to upholding and protecting the human rights of Bangladeshi citizens. The significance of this paper lies in exploring the complexities associated with the laws and insular national politics, which often debars the enforcement of human rights and crucially compromises Bangladesh’s ability to empower its citizens. (shrink)