This volume tracks the evolution of Mansbridge's key contributions to democratic theory in participatory, institutional and feminist contexts through articles that span her entire career to date.

Liberalism faces a tension between its commitment to minimal interference with individual liberty and the urgent need for strong collective action on global climate change. This paper attempts to resolve that tension. It does so on the one hand by defending an expanded model of collective moral responsibility, according to which a set of individuals can be responsible, qua ?putative group?, for harm resulting from the predictable aggregation of their individual acts. On the other, it defends a collectivized version of (...) the harm principle. The claim is that the collectivized principle pushes the burden of argument, against coercively enforced measures to curtail climate change and compensate its victims, onto the global elite collectively responsible for environmental harms. Some such potential arguments are briefly considered and rejected. (shrink)

There is little agreement about what grounds obligations of distributive justice. This paper defends cosmopolitan coercion theory against recent criticism that coercive rule is not even sufficient to generate obligations of distributive justice. On one of the most sustained arguments against the idea that coercion is sufficient to generate obligations of distributive justice, critics object that coercion, and other nonvoluntary relationships, cannot fix the scope, or content, of these obligations. At best, critics argue, nonvoluntary relationships can ground (...) obligations of charity or humanity. This paper argues that this Scope/Content Critique fails, in part, because it does not recognize the motivation for coercion theories. Moreover, despite assertions to the contrary, the Scope/Content Critique assumes coercion must suffice to ground obligations of distributive justice. Nonvoluntarists can hold there are many things, in addition to nonvoluntary relations, that can ground them. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s political philosophy has enjoyed renewed attention as an egalitarian alternative to contemporary inequality since it seems to uncompromisingly reassert the primacy of the state over the economy, enabling it to defend the modern welfare state against encroaching neoliberal markets. However, I argue that, when understood as a free-standing approach to politics, Kant’s doctrine of right shares essential features with the prevailing theories that legitimate really existing economic inequality. Like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, Kant understands the state’s (...) function as essentially coercive and, in justifying state coercion, he adopts a narrow conception of political freedom that formally preserves the right to choose while denying that the range of choices one actually has can be a matter of justice. As a result, Kant cannot identify various forms of social pressure as potential injustices even as he recognizes their power to create and sustain troubling inequalities. For both Kant and the neoliberals, the result is that economic relations almost never count as unjust forms of coercion, no matter how unequal they are. Views that identify coercion as the trigger for duties of justice are thus particularly ill-suited to orient us to contemporary inequality. (shrink)

Respect for autonomy and beneficence are frequently regarded as the two essential principles of medical ethics, and the potential for these two principles to come into conflict is often emphasised as a fundamental problem. On the one hand, we have the value of beneficence, the driving force of medicine, which demands that medical professionals act to protect or promote the wellbeing of patients or research subjects. On the other, we have a principle of respect for autonomy, which demands that we (...) respect the self-regarding decisions of individuals. As well as routinely coming into opposition with the demands of beneficence in medicine, the principle of respect for autonomy in medical ethics is often seen as providing protection against beneficial coercion (i.e. paternalism) in medicine. However, these two values are not as straightforwardly opposed as they may appear on the surface. In fact, the way that we understand autonomy can lead us to implicitly sanction a great deal of paternalistic action, or can smuggle in paternalistic elements under the guise of respect for autonomy. -/- This paper is dedicated to outlining three ways in which the principle of respect for autonomy, depending on how we understand the concept of autonomy, can sanction or smuggle in paternalistic elements. As the specific relationship between respect for autonomy and beneficence will depend on how we conceive of autonomy, I begin by outlining two dominant conceptions of autonomy, both of which have great influence in medical ethics. I then turn to the three ways in which how we understand or employ autonomy can increase or support paternalism: firstly, when we equate respect for autonomy with respect for persons; secondly, when our judgements about what qualifies as an autonomous action contain intersubjective elements; and thirdly, when we expect autonomy to play an instrumental role, that is, when we expect people, when they are acting autonomously, to act in a way that promotes or protects their own wellbeing. I then provide a proposal for how we might work to avoid this. I will suggest that it may be impossible to fully separate paternalistic elements out from judgements about autonomy. Instead, we are better off looking at why we are motivated to use judgements about autonomy as a means of restricting the actions of patients or research subjects. I will argue that this is a result of discomfort about speaking directly about our beneficent motivations in medical ethics. Perhaps we can reduce the incentive to smuggle in these beneficent motivations under the guise of autonomy by talking directly about beneficent motivations in medicine. This will also force us to recognise paternalistic motivations in medicine when they appear, and to justify paternalism where it occurs. (shrink)

Public reason accounts commonly claim that exercises of coercive political power must be justified by appeal to reasons accessible to all citizens. Such accounts are vulnerable to the objection that they cannot legitimate coercion to protect basic liberal rights against infringement by deeply illiberal people. This paper first elaborates the distinctive interpersonal conception of justification in public reason accounts in contrast to impersonal forms of justification. I then detail a core dissenter-based objection to public reason based on a (...) worrisome example advanced by Jonathan Quong. While we may be able to impersonally justify coercing the illiberal dissenter, public reason liberals must explain how we can interpersonally justify such coercion—meaning justify given the perspective of the dissenter. The two prominent strategies for dealing with dissenters involve idealization of reasoning and requiring liberal values; I show that these strategies do not succeed in a way compatible with the public reason project. That is, the prominent strategies leave public reason theorists with a dilemma between denying the legitimacy of using coercion to protect core freedoms against deeply illiberal people or abandoning the fundamental public reason project. I conclude by proposing a different answer to public reason liberalism’s fundamental question: what requires justification? On my account, it is not that coercion requires interpersonal justification for its permissibility, but that such justification is necessary as a constitutive element of a kind of moral community. (shrink)

According to recently influential conceptions of public reasoning, citizens have the right to demand of each other ‘public justifications’ for controversial political action. On this view, only arguments that all reasonable citizens can affirm from within their diverse ethical standpoints can count as legitimate justifications for political action. Both proponents and critics often assume that the case for this expectation derives from the special justificatory burden created by the systematically coercive character of political action. This paper challenges that assumption. (...) While conceding that citizens who propose to deploy the coercive apparatus of the state to enforce controversial legislation owe their fellows a justification that overcomes the strong presumption against coercing agents, it denies that this consideration can explain why public justifications are also required. Having argued that the public justification requirement is not among the justification conditions for public coercion, the paper then proposes an alternative rationale for the expectation that political action be publicly justified. On this alternative, the case for the public justification requirement depends on democratic citizens’ standing as legislative co-authors, and not on considerations having to do with their liability as private individuals to coercion at the hands of the state. (shrink)

According to recently influential conceptions of public reasoning, citizens have the right to demand of each other ‘public justifications’ for controversial political action. On this view, only arguments that all reasonable citizens can affirm from within their diverse ethical standpoints can count as legitimate justifications for political action. Both proponents and critics often assume that the case for this expectation derives from the special justificatory burden created by the systematically coercive character of political action. This paper challenges that assumption. (...) While conceding that citizens who propose to deploy the coercive apparatus of the state to enforce controversial legislation owe their fellows a justification that overcomes the strong presumption against coercing agents, it denies that this consideration can explain why public justifications are also required. Having argued that the public justification requirement is not among the justification conditions for public coercion, the paper then proposes an alternative rationale for the expectation that political action be publicly justified. On this alternative, the case for the public justification requirement depends on democratic citizens’ standing as legislative co-authors, and not on considerations having to do with their liability as private individuals to coercion at the hands of the state. (shrink)

Arash Abizadeh claims that ‘[a]nyone accepting the democratic theory of political legitimation domestically is thereby committed to rejecting the unilateral domestic right to control state boundaries’. He bases this conclusion on the premise that ‘to be democratically legitimate, a state’s regime of border control must result from political processes in which those subject to it—including foreigners—have a right of democratic participation’. I shall argue that this premise, even if it were correct, does not support the conclusion since ‘democratic legitimacy’ (...) is morally irrelevant: that something is ‘democratically illegitimate’ in no way suggests, let alone implies, that it is also morally impermissible or contravenes a moral right. I shall consider counter-arguments advanced against this objection by Maxime Lepoutre and Abizadeh himself and argue that they fail. Thus there is no valid democratic argument against border coercion. (shrink)

The question of whether or not a closed border entry policy under the unilateral control of a democratic state is legitimate cannot be settled until we first know to whom the justification of a regime of control is owed. According to the state sovereignty view, the control of entry policy, including of movement, immigration, and naturalization, ought to be under the unilateral discretion of the state itself: justification for entry policy is owed solely to members. This position, however, is (...) inconsistent with the democratic theory of popular sovereignty. Anyone accepting the democratic theory of political legitimation domestically is thereby committed to rejecting the unilateral domestic right to control state boundaries. Because the demos of democratic theory is in principle unbounded, the regime of boundary control must be democratically justified to foreigners as well as to citizens, in political institutions in which both foreigners and citizens can participate. (shrink)

Some libertarians argue that informed consent alone makes transactions in the labour market morally justified. In contrast, some of their critics claim that such an act of consent is no guarantee against coercion. To know whether agreements are voluntary, we need to assess the quality of the offers or the prevailing background conditions. ISCT theorists argue that it is imperative to take social norms into account when evaluating the labour market. We present a novel framework for moral assessment in (...) the labour market, which takes consent, background conditions and norms into account, but which mainly focuses on the offers and demands made. Consent renders a transaction legitimate in the same way we regard a fair election legitimate even if we object to its outcome. For offers to be substantially justified, exploitation must be avoided and offers must give expression to the value of community. Only then they are morally justified. (shrink)

As a classical liberal, or libertarian, I am concerned to advance liberty and minimize coercion. Indeed on this view liberty just is the absence of coercion or costs imposed on others. In order to better understand the notion of coercion I discuss Robert Nozick's classic essay on the subject as well as more recent contributions. I then address the question of whether law is coercive, and respond to Edmundson and others who think that it isn't. Assuming that (...) the law is in fact coercive, there is still a question,as with all coercive acts, as to whether that coercion is justified. Edmundson thinks that this places a special burden on the state of justifying its existence, whereas it simply places the same burden on the state as anyone else. What I reject is the longstanding doctrine of Staatsrason, namely that the state is not subject to the same moral rules as its subjects. With respect to the relation of morality to law, Edmundson thought that another of the fallacies of which philosophical anarchists were guilty was that of assuming that there was a sphere of morality where law had no business. On the contrary, our concern is with spheres of law which appear to have little to do with morality, which is to say laws against wrongs of the malum prohibitum variety, as opposed to wrongs which are malum in se. I then turn to a matter with which Edmundson begins his study, namely how it is that states acquire the authority to do what they do, namely coerce their subjects. While the fact that the philosopher's stone of political obligation has proved rather elusive may mean that a legitimate state lacks the authority to demand obedience pure and simple, Edmundson contends that it can at the very least demand that we do not interfere in the administration of justice. I argue that this attempt to sidestep the justification of the authority of the state fails and that we seem in the end to be having to take the state's word for it that we must do X on pain of penalty P. Nor, as I go on to argue, is it any help to appeal to democracy to remedy a failed justification of the authority of the state. There either is a moral justification of state coercion in order to prevent harm to innocent subjects, or there isn't, and this holds,if it does, not only at the level of individuals, but also at the level of the state, regardless of its constitutional form. After concluding that the attempts of Edmundson and others to refute the anarchic turn in recent political philosophy have failed, it would seem that the withering away of the state foreseen in Marx's eschatology is not as improbable as maybe it once appeared. (shrink)

This article discusses under what circumstances patients who are suffering from senile dementia or mental retardation should be submitted to coercive care, who should decide about this kind of coercion, and in what legal framework it should take place. A distinction is drawn between modest (i.e. of moderate degree) and meddlesome coercion. The use of modest coercion is defended. It is argued that medical personnel ought to decide exclusively about the use of modest coercion. However, no (...) law should render legitimate the use of even modest coercion. It is conceded that to prohibit the use of a kind of coercion that is expected to take place is hypocrisy. It is argued that this is, however, an acceptable form of hypocrisy. (shrink)

Coercion by the recipient of consent renders that consent invalid. But what about when the coercive force comes from a third party, not from the person to whom consent would be proffered? In this paper I analyze how threats from a third party affect consent. I argue that, as with other cases of coercion, we should distinguish threats that render consent invalid from threats whose force is too weak to invalidate consent and threats that are legitimate. Illegitimate (...) controlling third party threats render consent invalid just as they do in two party cases. However, knowing that the consent is invalid is not sufficient to tell the recipient of consent what she may or should do. I argue that when presented with a token of consent from someone whom she thinks is experiencing an illegitimate controlling threat, the recipient may act on that token if and only if doing so represents a reasonable joint decision for her and the victim of coercion. The appropriate action for someone faced with third party coercion therefore depends on the other options open to her and those open to the victim of coercion. (shrink)

Some interpretations of the term “coercion” entail that a person who is coerced is morally entitled to do what she does. But there is a vague spectrum of uses of this term, in which one use shades into another. “Coercion” can legitimately be interpreted in a way according to which it is possible for a person who is coerced not to be morally entitled to do what she does and indeed to be blameworthy for her action. In order (...) to distinguish between cases in which a coercee is not blameworthy for compliance and those in which a coercee is blameworthy, an account of moral blameworthiness is presented. The account does not deal, however, with the question of when one harm or evil outweighs another. A person is morally blameworthy if and only if she performs an action which is, on balance, morally wrong, and for which she is morally responsible. Three different standards of moral responsibility are considered. The first two are found to be susceptible to counterexamples. The third, which is claimed to be adequate, is that a moral agent is responsible for a morally wrong action if and only if, first, either she has the psychological capacity to refrain from doing what she does, or, if she lacks this capacity, she nevertheless had a Isecond-order) psychological capacity to prevent the lack of capacity in question; and, second, the moral agent knows what she is doing, under the description of her action according to which it is a wrong action. Thus, where a moral agent is coerced into doing an immoral action, and lacked the psychological capacity to refrain from performing the action, this standard of responsibility enables us to decide whether or not she is blameworthy on the basis of whether the lack of the capacity was due to ordinary human weakness or to a fault of character. (shrink)

This paper focuses on land as a domain in which legitimate expectations can give rise to entitlements. The central argument is that people are connected to other people and to projects, which are symbolically and materially rooted in particular places. This gives rise to an interest – an interest that is sufficiently weighty that it imposes obligations on other people – to protect stability of place. There are two ways in which legitimate expectations structure argument about land. It (...) justifies liberty rights to remain in a place, and not be removed or expelled from it, independently of the coercion that often accompanies forcible expulsion, and argue for rights of return as a second-order right when this right has been violated. I also argue that passage of time in a changed context can affect people’s legitimate expectations, and so their entitlements. (shrink)

This article proposes a model for regulating use of cognition enhancement drugs for nontherapeutic purposes. Using the method of reflective equilibrium, the author starts from the considered judgment of many citizens that treatments are obligatory and permissible while enhancements are not, and with the application of general principles of justice explains why this is the case. The author further analyzes and refutes three reasons that some influential authors in the field of neuroethics might have for downplaying the importance of justice: (...) (1) Justice applies only to public funds and state action—not to individual choice or corporate actors. (2) “Performance enhancement” does imply questions of justice, while “performance maintenance” does not. (3) There is no sufficient difference between cognition-enhancement drugs and other technologies to warrant the importance of justice for the debate. The challenges are refuted by taking into account the difference between consumption and tool use, and the influence of socioeconomic pressure for widespread use that existing drugs could have on the basic structure of society and equal autonomy of citizens. The analysis of requirements of justice points to a conclusion that introducing economic disincentives for the use of cognition-enhancement drugs would be the most legitimate public policy. With the imposition of taxes, fees, and requirements of additional insurance, the use and indirect coercion to use would be less profitable and less widespread, while additional funds thus created could be allocated to meet basic medical needs and/or education. (shrink)

In what sense is a person addicted to drugs or alcohol incompetent, and so a legitimate object of coercive treatment? The standard tests for competence do not pick out the capacity that is lost in addiction: the capacity to properly regulate consumption. This paper is an attempt to sketch a justificatory framework for understanding the conditions under which addicted persons may be treated against their will. These conditions rarely obtain, for they apply only when addiction is extremely severe and (...) great harm threatens. It will be argued also that to widen the measures currently in place in some jurisdictions, though philosophically well-motivated, would require very strong evidence of a set of conditions disposing a person to an addictive future. It is doubtful that any such currently available evidence is strong enough to justify coercive treatment. Nevertheless, coercive treatment of addiction is already a reality, with the potential for more, and so some discussion will be presented regarding the extraordinary safeguards necessary to prevent misapplication of such treatment policies. (shrink)

In this article I argue that while an attachment to one's country is both natural and even partially justifiable, cultivating loyal patriotism in schools is untenable insofar as it conflicts with the legitimate aims of education. These aims include the epistemological competence necessary for ascertaining important truths germane to the various disciplines; the cultivation of critical thinking skills ; and developing the capacity for economic self‐reliance. I argue that loyal patriotism may result in a myopic understanding of history, an (...) unhealthy attitude of superiority relative to other cultures, and a coerced sense of attachment to one's homeland. (shrink)

In what sense is a person addicted to drugs or alcohol incompetent, and so a legitimate object of coercive treatment? The standard tests for competence do not pick out the capacity that is lost in addiction: the capacity to properly regulate consumption. This paper is an attempt to sketch a justificatory framework for understanding the conditions under which addicted persons may be treated against their will. These conditions rarely obtain, for they apply only when addiction is extremely severe and (...) great harm threatens. It will be argued also that to widen the measures currently in place in some jurisdictions, though philosophically well-motivated, would require very strong evidence of a set of conditions disposing a person to an addictive future. It is doubtful that any such currently available evidence is strong enough to justify coercive treatment. Nevertheless, coercive treatment of addiction is already a reality, with the potential for more, and so some discussion will be presented regarding the extraordinary safeguards necessary to prevent misapplication of such treatment policies. (shrink)

The last several decades have witnessed a vibrant discussion about the proper political role of religion in pluralistic liberal democracies. An important part of that discussion has been a dispute about the role that religious and secular reasons properly play in the justification of state coercion. Most of the theorists who have participated in that discussion have endorsed a restrictive understanding of the justificatory role available to religious reasons. Most importantly, advocates of that restrictive understanding deny that state (...) class='Hi'>coercion that depends for its justification on religious considerations is morally legitimate. This standard, restrictive view can be formulated in various importantly different ways. All versions affirm certain core claims—that we ought to respect each human being and that proper respect for each human being requires that state coercion be justified to the coerced. But thereafter advocates of the standard view disagree about how to fill in the details. In this paper, I will focus on one "detail" that is both central to the standard view and also a source of much disagreement among its advocates, viz., what makes it the case that state coercion is justified to the coerced? (shrink)

World Crisis and Underdevelopment examines the impact of poverty and other global crises in generating forms of structural coercion that cause agential and societal underdevelopment. It draws from discourse ethics and recognition theory in criticizing injustices and pathologies associated with underdevelopment. Its scope is comprehensive, encompassing discussions about development science, philosophical anthropology, global migration, global capitalism and economic markets, human rights, international legal institutions, democratic politics and legitimation, world religions and secularization, and moral philosophy in its many varieties.

This chapter focuses on John Rawls's recent approach to liberal political legitimacy. His views on reasonableness and rationality are considered. It is argued that Rawls's legitimation pool for political liberalism is defined precisely in such a way as to exclude those whose prior commitments would lead them to reject political liberalism. The challenge for Rawls is to find good but politically independent reasons for eliminating so-called unreasonable people from the legitimation pool.

In Considerations on Representative Government, John Stuart Mill concedes that secrecy in voting is often justified but, nonetheless, maintains that it should be the exception rather than the rule. This paper critically examines Mill’s arguments. It shows that Mill’s idea of voting depends on a sharp public/private distinction which is difficult to square with democratic ideas about the different powers and responsibilities of voters and their representatives, or with legitimate differences of belief and interest amongst voters themselves. Hence, it (...) concludes, we should reject the assumption, which many of us share with Mill, that the secret ballot is justified only on prudential grounds and recognise how central privacy is to any democratic conception of citizenship and politics. (shrink)

Organisations increasingly use digital nudges to influence their workforces’ behaviour without coercion or incentives. This can expose employees to arbitrary domination by infringing on their autonomy through manipulation and indoctrination. Nudges might furthermore give rise to the phenomenon of “organised immaturity.” Adopting a balanced approach between overly optimistic and dystopian standpoints, I propose a framework for determining the moral permissibility of digital nudging in the workplace. In this regard, I argue that not only should organisations provide pre-discursive justification of (...) nudges but they should also ensure that employees can challenge their implementation whenever necessary through legitimation procedures. Building on Rainer Forst’s concept of the right to justification, this article offers a way to combine contract- and deliberation-based theories for addressing questions in business ethics. I further introduce the concept of meta-autonomy as a capacity that employees can acquire to counter threats of arbitrary domination and to mitigate organised immaturity. (shrink)

Wenn Kant in der Einleitung zur Rechtslehre der Metaphysik der Sitten das Recht nach dem Satz vom Widerspruch "mit der Befugniß zu zwingen" verbindet , so scheint dies den völligen Verzicht auf die für das neuzeitliche Naturrecht typischen anthropologischen Prämissen zur Rechtfertigung des Zwanges zu implizieren. Auf der anderen Seite wird in § E die Verknüpfung des Rechtsbegriffs mit gleichem, wechselseitigen Zwang nach allgemeinen Gesetzen als dessen "Darstellung in der reinen Anschauung a priori" bezeichnet, was auf ein synthetisches Urteil apriori (...) hinzuweisen scheint. In einem ersten Abschnitt wird daher gezeigt, daß es sich hier nicht etwa um eine Inkonsistenz in Kants Werk handelt, sondern um eine Anwendung seiner Methodenlehre, parallel zum Begriff der Materie in den Metaphysischen Anfangsgründen der Naturwissenschaft. Die Anschauung in Form einiger basaler Kenntnisse über menschliches Verhalten sichert die Anwendbarkeit des Rechtsbegriffs, der dann tatsächlich analytisch mit der Befugnis zu zwingen verknüpft ist. In einem zweiten Abschnitt wird dem möglichen Vorwurf, dies ermögliche eine Legitimation beliebigen staatlichen Zwanges als rechtmäßig, damit begegnet, daß Kant gerade die Gleichheit, Wechselseitigkeit und Gesetzesbindung des Zwanges in den Mittelpunkt stellt. Der dritte Abschnitt weist darauf hin, daß gerade die elementaren Wahrheiten über menschliches Verhalten, die für die Rechtstheorie relevant sind, nicht ins empiristische analytisch-synthetisch-Schema passen, daß bestimmte fundamentale Annahmen über den Zweck von Recht und Moral jedenfalls nicht denselben Status besitzen wie jederzeit falsifizierbare empirische Resultate. (shrink)

This paper offers a non-reductivist account of the requirement of legitimate authority in warfare. I first advance a distinction between private and public wars. A war is private where individuals defend their private rights with their private means. A war is public where it either aims to defend public rights or relies on public means. I argue that RLA applies to public war but not private war. A public war waged by a belligerent without legitimate authority involves a (...) form of illegitimate domination of the people. Contra the conventional wisdom that RLA is only an ad bellum principle, I show that RLA is also a vital in bello principle. Relying on the Kantian non-voluntarist account of political authority, I argue that only legitimate states have the right to wage public wars. However, I also contend that RLA is not an absolute requirement, even regarding the justice of public war. Under extremely unfavorable conditions, this requirement may be overridden by weighty considerations in favor of resorting to public war without legitimate authority. In sum, my account of RLA protects ordinary people from illegitimate coercion involved in guerrilla warfare in general yet generates proper permission for responsible, aspiring state founders to secure social justice by coercive means under extraordinary situations. (shrink)

What is political philosophy’s relation to moral philosophy? Does it simply form part of moral philosophy, focusing on the proper application of certain moral truths to political reality? Or must it instead form a more autonomous discipline, drawing its bearings from the specifically political problem of determining the bounds of legitimate coercion? In this essay I work out an answer to these questions by examining both some of the classical views on the nature of political philosophy and, more (...) particularly, some recently published writings by Bernard Williams and G.A. Cohen. (shrink)

Globalization connects everyone, from the world’s poorest slum dweller tothe richest billionaire. Globalization and Global Justice starts by giving a newargument for the conclusion that coercive international institutions —whosesubjects who are likely to face sanctions for violation of their rules— mustensure that everyone they coerce secures basic necessities like food, waterand medicines. It then suggests that it is possible for coercive institutionsto fulfill their obligations by, for instance, providing international aid andmaking free trade fair. This overview sketches the argument in (...) the book’sfirst half, as which is the focus of the papers in the symposium. (shrink)

In this paper Jane Mansbridge reflects upon the role of resistance in democracy. Resistance “can cause inaction by focusing on stopping, rather than using, coercion.”’ Instead we should increase the legitimacy of democratic action and in that manner further the possibility of sanction through coercion. An improvement of democratic institutions and of the procedures of deliberation, which makes room for citizen input, would also make for a more efficacious and organized resistance, when necessary.

Tolerance cannot not be concerned with the law, once it takes up in its concept the relationship between truth and justice. And there are several reasons for this. To begin with, the word right enters into many definitions of tolerance: the right to difference, to liberty, to those fundamental public freedoms that constitute human rights. Moreover, law, as opposed to morality, is the public instance where obligation is coupled with legitimate coercion. Finally, juridical institutions offer an excellent vantage (...) point from which to observe the transformations of the idea of tolerance and scan the history of the struggles carried out in its name. (shrink)

How is a legitimate state possible? Obedience, coercion and intrusion are three ideas that seem inseparable from all government and seem to render state authority presumptively illegitimate. This book exposes three fallacies inspired by these ideas and in doing so challenges assumptions shared by liberals, libertarians, cultural conservatives, moderates and Marxists. In three clear and tightly argued essays William Edmundson dispels these fallacies and shows that living in a just state remains a worthy ideal. This is an important (...) book for all philosophers, political scientists and legal theorists as well as other readers interested in the views of Rawls, Dworkin and Nozick, many of whose central ideas are subjected to rigorous critique. (shrink)

Contemporary debates on obedience and consent, such as those between Thomas Senor and A. John Simmons, suggest that either political obligation must exist as a concept or there must be natural duty of justice accessible to us through reason. Without one or the other, de facto political institutions would lack the requisite moral framework to engage in legitimate coercion. This essay suggests that both are unnecessary in order to provide a conceptual framework in which obedience to coercive political (...) institutions can be understood. By providing a novel reading of Hobbes’s Leviathan, this article argues that both political obligation and a natural duty to justice are unnecessary to ground the ability of political institutions to engage in legitimate coercion. This essay takes issue with common readings of Hobbes which assume consent is necessary to generate obedience on the part of citizens, and furthermore that political obligation is critical for the success of political institutions. While the failure of the traditional Hobbesian narrative of a consenting individual would seem to suggest the Leviathan is indefensible as a project, this paper argues that the right of war in the state of nature was more central for Hob- bes’s understanding of political institutions than obligation. Furthermore, Hobbes provides an adequate defense of political institutions even if his arguments about consent, obligation and punishment are only rhetorical. In this way Hobbesian law is best understood as a set of practical requirements to avoid war, and not as moral requirements that individuals are bound to comply with. Thus Hobbesian political institutions are not vulnerable to contemporary philosophical anarchist criticisms about political obligation and political institutions as such. To develop this reading, I focus primarily on the Leviathan, including interpretations by Skinner, Kateb, Flathman, and Oakeshott. Ultimately, this argument provides insight into contem- porary political institutions of the state, citizenship, criminality, and the law in a world where political obligation has not been adequately justified. (shrink)

In this dissertation I argue that the concept of a moral right is best explicated by means of the concept of morally legitimate coercion. This thesis, which I call the enforceability thesis, says that to have a right is to have a claim such that one would be justified in pursuing a course of action up to and including harm should the claim be dissatisfied. I contend that this thesis, if it is true, explains much about our intuitions (...) concerning moral rights, accounts for the historical importance of rights-talk in the context of events such as revolutions and political reforms, and explains why rights are a necessary part of the moral vocabulary. If rights do not set out conditions under which coercion is morally appropriate, then they do nothing that other moral concepts could not do. ;Drawing on the work of H. L. A. Hart, John Rawls, and others, I argue that the philosophical strength and practical efficacy of rights on the enforceability thesis is best realized when rights are treated as action-guiding principles set within a framework of moral decision making under reflective equilibrium. Using the process of reflective equilibrium as a backdrop, I argue that rights can have sufficient normative force to play an important role in moral and political theory without being either impracticably stringent or subject to so many exceptions that they lose their efficacy. ;With this background in place I next set out and argue for a view of human rights which, because human rights turn out to be best understood as rights to primary goods, I call the theory of primary rights. The account I give of primary rights emphasizes their justificatory place in arguments for coercion, their importance to the moral integrity of the individual, and the practical applicability of the overarching theory of rights developed in this dissertation. (shrink)

Tolerance cannot not be concerned with the law, once it takes up in its concept the relationship between truth and justice. And there are several reasons for this. To begin with, the word right enters into many definitions of tolerance: the right to difference, to liberty, to those fundamental public freedoms that constitute human rights. Moreover, law, as opposed to morality, is the public instance where obligation is coupled with legitimate coercion. Finally, juridical institutions offer an excellent vantage (...) point from which to observe the transformations of the idea of tolerance and scan the history of the struggles carried out in its name. (shrink)

This article argues that people have legitimate interests in privacy that deserve legal protection on democratic principles. It describes the right to privacy as a bundle of rights of personal choice, association and expression and shows that, so described, people have legitimate political interests in privacy. These interests reflect the ways that privacy rights can supplement the protection for people’s freedom and equality provided by rights of political choice, association and expression, and can help to make sure that (...) these are, genuinely, democratic. Feminists have often been ambivalent about legal protection for privacy, because privacy rights have, so often, protected the coercion and exploitation of women, and made it difficult to politicise personal forms of injustice. However, attention to the differences between democratic and undemocratic forms of politics can enable us to meet these concerns, and to distinguish a democratic justification of privacy rights from the alternatives. (shrink)

Anarchists standardly critique the state for being illegitimate, and for being dominating in some sense. Often these criticisms come as a bundle: the state is illegitimate because it is dominating. But there are various stories we might tell about the connection between the two; domination makes consent impossible, domination means that the state fails to meet its own justification for existing (or for claiming authority), and so on. I suggest that we should sidestep concerns about consent: in part because it (...) seems possible for people to genuinely consent to something which is nonetheless impermissible, but also because many anarchists offer views of political organisation which very clearly involve some coercion of rule-breakers – Malatesta, for example, explicitly endorses the exclusion of persistent non-compliers. Rather, I argue that the best way to understand why the state is illegitimate – and a way which is immanent in many anarchist critiques – is to combine something like a Pettitian analysis of domination with a requirement that genuine authorities (and authoritative imperatives) recognise us as agents and treat us accordingly. On this view, states are necessarily dominating in virtue of two key features: dominating in virtue of being able to exercise arbitrary power over agents, necessarily so because part of what it is to be a state is to be an institution which exercises (and refrains from exercising) power in virtue of morally arbitrary features. As a paradigm case, states must be able to exclude non-citizens, on pain of losing their successful claim to a monopoly on legitimate force. But to recognise somebody as an agent is inconsistent with denying them access to territory or services on the basis of something as arbitrary as their place of birth. This analysis also explains why it’s possible to hold that all states are illegitimate, but some are nonetheless “better” than others – depending on the structure of a state and the power held by its citizens, we may be more or less vulnerable to arbitrary interference, and hence be more or less dominated, in one state than another. (shrink)

In this essay, I discuss why consent is invalidated by duress that involves attaching penalties to someone's refusal to give consent. At the heart of my explanation is the Complaint Principle. This principle specifies that consent is defeasibly invalid when the consent results from someone conditionally imposing a penalty on the consent‐giver's refusal to give the consent, such that the consent‐giver has a legitimate complaint against this imposition focused on how it is affects their incentives for consenting. The Complaint (...) Principle says that this consent is defeasibly invalid to make room for the Authorization Principle, which allows sincere authorizations to constitute valid consent, even when these are issued by an agent acting under duress. The Authorization Principle has application only in cases of third‐party duress because when the consent‐receiver is the source of the duress, the consent‐giver is not sincerely authorizing the action. (shrink)

How is a legitimate state possible? Obedience, coercion and intrusion are three ideas that seem inseparable from all government and seem to render state authority presumptively illegitimate. This book exposes three fallacies inspired by these ideas and in doing so challenges assumptions shared by liberals, libertarians, cultural conservatives, moderates and Marxists. In three clear and tightly argued essays William Edmundson dispels these fallacies and shows that living in a just state remains a worthy ideal. This is an important (...) book for all philosophers, political scientists and legal theorists as well as other readers interested in the views of Rawls, Dworkin and Nozick, many of whose central ideas are subjected to rigorous critique. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Political Liberalism—The Main Elements Civic Respect and Civic Education Comprehensive Doctrines and Families Coercion and the Basic Structure Conclusion Notes References.

For Rousseau, humankind is in a perpetual state of decay—decadency from an earlier, natural, primitive, and perfect state. For Rousseau, the natural man, or man in the state of beast, was of an era where humankind was unencumbered by that which is now entirely associated with society—that is, “. . . establishment of laws and of the right of property . . . the institution of magistracy . . . and the conversion of legitimate into arbitrary power.” For Kant, (...) humankind is in its natural state. For Kant, nature brings about conditions that continually develop and refine humankind’s dispositions, purposefully setting about societies in order to facilitate a foundation within all civilized society, whereby all of humankind’s goals may be achieved. All matters have their place—placed there by nature, as though with purpose. For Kant, nature intended for humankind to employ reason, to acquiesce to coercion for social cohesion, and to strive to build a society that is ever-increasingly progressing towards perfection. Nature uses humankind’s dispositions, including ‘antagonistic’ behavior to gradually bring about a, “perfectly just civil constitution.” Humankind’s highest goal yet to be achieved is for that just civil constitution to emerge from trial and error (in the form of wars, revolutions, secessions, abdications), over time, ultimately providing for development of other dispositions within a perfect society. (shrink)

In this essay, I discuss why consent is invalidated by duress that involves attaching penalties to someone's refusal to give consent. At the heart of my explanation is the Complaint Principle. This principle specifies that consent is defeasibly invalid when the consent results from someone conditionally imposing a penalty on the consent‐giver's refusal to give the consent, such that the consent‐giver has a legitimate complaint against this imposition focused on how it is affects their incentives for consenting. The Complaint (...) Principle says that this consent is defeasibly invalid to make room for the Authorization Principle, which allows sincere authorizations to constitute valid consent, even when these are issued by an agent acting under duress. The Authorization Principle has application only in cases of third‐party duress because when the consent‐receiver is the source of the duress, the consent‐giver is not sincerely authorizing the action. (shrink)

The liberal view that valid consent is sufficient for a sex act to be morally legitimate is challenged by three major philosophies of sex: the Catholic view of sex as ordained for procreation and properly confined to marriage, the romantic view of sex as bound up with love, and the radical feminist analysis of sex in our society as part and parcel of the domination of women by men. I take a critical look at all three, focusing on Mary (...) Geach''s recent statement of the procreation view, Roger Scruton''s theory of sexual desire as naturally evolving into intimacy and love, and several radical feminist discussions of sex in sexist society which argue that the notion of consent is unhelpful and, indeed, irrelevant. I argue that none of these lines of argument is convincing, and that consent remains the touchstone of morally permissible sex – although, dmittedly, it may not be very helpful in discussing ideals of human sexuality. (shrink)

Political legitimacy is a virtue of political institutions and of the decisions—about laws, policies, and candidates for political office—made within them. This entry will survey the main answers that have been given to the following questions. First, how should legitimacy be defined? Is it primarily a descriptive or a normative concept? If legitimacy is understood normatively, what does it entail? Some associate legitimacy with the justification of coercive power and with the creation of political authority. Others associate it with the (...) justification, or at least the sanctioning, of existing political authority. Authority stands for a right to rule—a right to issue commands and, possibly, to enforce these commands using coercive power. An additional question is whether legitimate political authority is understood to entail political obligations or not. Most people probably think it does. But some think that the moral obligation to obey political authority can be separated from an account of legitimate authority, or at least that such obligations arise only if further conditions hold. (shrink)