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  1. Consequentialism and the Case of Symmetrical Attackers.Stephen Kershnar - 2019 - Utilitas 31 (4):395-413.
    There are puzzle cases that forfeiture theory has trouble handling, such as the issue of what happens to the rights of two qualitatively identical people who simultaneously launch unprovoked attacks against the other. Each person either has or lacks the right to defend against the other. If one attacker has the right, then the other does not and vice versa. Yet the two are qualitatively identical so it is impossible for one to have the right if the other does not. (...)
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  2. Book Review: Retributivism Has a Past: Has It a Future?, edited by Michael Tonry. [REVIEW]Stephen Kershnar - 2015 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 12 (1):112-115.
    Retributivism is the notion that punishment is justified because, and only because, the wrongdoer deserves it. Proportionality is central to retributivism. A proportional punishment is one in which the severity of a punishment is proportional to the seriousness of the offense (for example, its wrongness or harmfulness). Michael Tonry’s collection is must reading for punishments theorists. The articles are well-chosen and the reflections of theorists such as Andreas von Hirsch, R. A. Duff, and Douglas Husak who have shaped punishment theory (...)
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  3. Extremely Harsh Treatment.Stephen Kershnar - 2011 - Reason Papers 33:60-81.
    Extremely harsh treatment (for example, unanesthetized tooth, branding with a hot iron, violent shaking, repeated beatings, and car-battery shocks to the genitalia) is often considered unjust. On different accounts, extremely harsh treatment fails to respect persons because it infringes on an absolute right, fails to respect a person’s dignity, constitutes cruel or inhumane treatment, violates rules that rational persons would choose under fair and equal choosing conditions, or results in a person losing his agency to another. Others respond that in (...)
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  4. Hell, Threshold Deontology, and Abortion.Stephen Kershnar - 2010 - Philosophia Christi 12 (1):80-101.
    In this paper, I argue that Threshold-Hell Christianity conflicts with the pro-life position on abortion. The specific type of Christianity is that which also accepts threshold deontology and the existence of hell. Threshold deontology is the view that ordinarily moral duties consist of non-consequentialist side-constraints on the pursuit of the good but that in some cases these side-constraints are overridden. My strategy is to establish that a person who brings about an abortion guarantees that the aborted individual goes to heaven (...)
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  5. Assassination and the immunity theory.Stephen Kershnar - 2005 - Philosophia 33 (1-4):129-147.
    This paper argues for a policy of assassination. Foreign leaders causing unjust wars forfeit their rights against being killed. Killing them also satisfies the conditions on defensive violence that accompany forfeiture (consider, for example, imminence, necessity, and proportionality). Assassination sometimes maximizes the good. In some cases, then, assassination is right and good. A separate issue is whether it is good policy. To the extent that traditional just war theory disallows assassination, it should be revised or rejected.
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  6. The Moral Argument for a Policy of Assassination.Stephen Kershnar - 2004 - Reason Papers 27:43-66.
    In some cases, the U.S. should adopt a policy of assassinating national leaders. On just war theory, national leaders are sometimes combatants. This is because some leaders are both causal and logical agents of an unjust military campaign. Such leaders occupy this logical role because in some cases their position has an essential link to their nation’s military projects. In addition, such a policy aligns with some of the policies that motivate just war theory in that assassination does not target (...)
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  7. Review of Alan Wertheimer, Consent to Sexual Relations[REVIEW]Stephen Kershnar - 2004 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2004 (2).
    Alan Wertheimer’s book, Consent to Sexual Relations, is an important investigation of consent to sex. The book contains many interesting and insightful arguments and does a nice job of distinguishing the considerations that are relevant to moral and legal consent. The book is both broad and narrow. It is broad in that it discusses a broad array of interesting issues, including the psychology of rapists, the types of psychological harm that rape victims suffer, the moral status and nature of consent, (...)
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  8. Private property rights and autonomy.Stephen Kershnar - 2002 - Public Affairs Quarterly 16:231-258.
    A private property right is a collection of particular rights that relate to the control of an object. The ground for such moral rights rests on the value of project pursuit. It does so because the individual ownership of particular objects is intimately related to the formation and application of a coherent set of projects that are the major parts of a self-shaped life. Problems arise in explaining how unowned property is appropriated. Unilateral acts with regard to an object, e.g., (...)
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  9. There Is No Moral Right to Immigrate to the United States.Stephen Kershnar - 2000 - Public Affairs Quarterly 14 (2):141-158.
    U.S. citizens have a right to exclude potential immigrants. This right rests in part on the threat immigration poses to change the character of the institutions to which the current citizens have consented and in part on the threat immigrants pose to the citizens' rights to collective property. This right is probably not opposed by a human right to immigrate since such a right cannot be supported by arguments from equality, fairness, legitimate state authority, or libertarianism.
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  10. The Justification of Deserved Punishment.Stephen Kershnar - 1995 - Dissertation, The University of Nebraska - Lincoln
    A punitive desert-claim should be understood as a claim about the intrinsic value of punishment, where this value is grounded in an act or feature of the person to be punished. The purpose of my project is to explore the structure and justification of such punitive desert-claims. ;I argue that a true punitive desert-claim takes the form and , and that belief in these principles is justified on the basis of our considered moral judgments. The Principle of Deserved Punishment. A (...)
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  11. Hanink on the Survival Lottery.John Harris - 1978 - Philosophy 53 (203):100-101.
    Mr. Hanink objects to my ‘Survival Lottery’ which would save Y and Z, who need new organs, by choosing and killing A at random to provide them. He believes the relevant difference between killing A and not saving Y and Z ‘might well be this: Y and Z can not have A killed without intentionally seeking A's death. But a physician can “not save” Y and Z without intentionally seeking their deaths’.
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  12. The Survival Lottery.John Harris - 1975 - Philosophy 50 (191):81 - 87.
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  13. Can Utilitarianism Ground Human Rights?Leslie Allan - manuscript
    Leslie Allan demonstrates how human rights are unproblematic for utilitarian moral theory and how, upon consideration, utilitarianism turns out to be the best theory for justifying human rights. Using case studies of historical and contemporary human rights conventions and recent psychological research, he argues how our concept of human rights is founded on the satisfaction of fundamental human needs and the consequences for human happiness.
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  14. Notes on a utilitarian justification of rights: The strategy of pre-commitment.William Boardman - unknown
    To begin with, we need to separate off the easy talk of “rights” in which they seem automatically to correspond with a person’s duties or obligations. It is of course true that since I have a duty not to wreak murder or mayhem on you, you have the corresponding right that I not do these things. But so far, the talk of “rights” is simply an alternative way to speak of someone else’s duties; the special or unique point to a (...)
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