This paper draws on the underappreciated realist thought of Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire and Judith Shklar, rehearses their critique of moralism and extends it to a position which seems far from obvious a target: the dirty hands thesis, which is mostly owed to Michael Walzer, and which a number of contemporary realists have recently appealed to in their endeavour to challenge moralism and/or tackle the insufficiently addressed question of what a more affirmative, realist public ethic might involve. In illustrating that (...) the DH thesis is a thinly disguised brand of the moralism which realists reject, I shall not merely put some flesh on the bones of Shklar’s scattered, unsystematic objections to Walzer’s thought – the only realist who explicitly criticized his DH thesis. Rather, I wish to cast doubt on the internal coherence and ‘realism’ of contemporary realist positions which invoke that thesis and to illustrate that the discrepancy between Berlin’s, Shklar’s and Hampshire’s thought and the DH thesis: i) enriches our understanding of how we might wish to distinguish more meaningfully realism from the ideal/non-ideal theory debate; and ii) enables us to pursue a particular direction in which a more positive realist approach to public ethics and integrity might be developed – an approach which we might term Heraclitian realism, and which follows from their idiosyncratic, innovative, and radical account of the place of conflict in human life. (shrink)

This article deals critically with the process of coming to terms with ‘genocide’. It starts from the observation that conventional philosophical and legal approaches to capturing the essence of ‘genocide’ through an improved definition necessarily fail to adapt to the ever-changing nature of political violence. Faced with this challenge, the article suggests that the contemporary debate on genocide (and its denial) should be complemented with a focus on transforming the perceptive and interpretive frameworks through which acts of violence are discussed (...) in the public sphere. The main purpose of this article is to contribute, from the vantage point of political theory, to this debate by offering a novel normative perspective on negative reactions to genocide. Hence I argue that it is productive to speak of ‘genocide blindness’ in cases when the members of the public sphere are simply incapable of seeing an instance of violence as genocidal. To establish this claim, the article introduces Ludwig Wittgenstein’s reflections on ‘aspect-seeing’ so as to underline the importance of changing the way that political violence is perceived and interpreted. In a second step, the article turns to María Pía Lara’s theory of storytelling as a concrete mechanism for triggering and instituting this kind of change. (shrink)

This article examines the humanitarian approach to nuclear weapons, which has reinvigorated the efforts to achieve their prohibition. It explores the fundamental arguments made by the ‘Humanitarian...

For the traditional legalistic discourse on the International Criminal Court, “politics” is a bête noire that compromises the independence of the Court and thus needs to be avoided and overcome. In response to this legalistic approach, a burgeoning body of literature insists that the Court does not exist and operate “beyond politics”, arguing that the ICC is an institution where law and politics are intimately connected. The present article seeks to contribute to this “non-traditional” literature by addressing two of its (...) fundamental weaknesses: First, writers of the “non-traditional camp” often present a rather limited view of “politics”; in particular, they have shied away from taking the radical step of portraying and analysing the ICC as a “political actor”. This undermines both its critical and constructive potential. Secondly, these commentators offer a simplistic explanation as to why “traditionalists” treat politics as the ICC’s bête noire: Traditionalists, they claim, are “legalists” with scant interest in and understanding of politics. By focusing on the ICC’s nature as a political actor, this article does not only paint a more nuanced picture of the ICC but also demonstrates the constructive potential of this understanding of the ICC to shed light on the so-called “peace versus justice dilemma”. And secondly, it demonstrates that precisely because the ICC is and ought to be a prudent political actor, it must officially disavow politics. The “noble lie” of disavowing politics, therefore, is a prudential strategy to avoid dangerous moral and political consequences and, ultimately, to secure the continued existence of the ICC itself. (shrink)

This article addresses two questions: How should a ‘practical political theory’ approach the ideological struggle between advocates of critical social justice and defenders of free speech? And, what does this conflict tell us about the deficits of one particular tradition of practical political theory — namely, agonistic democracy? The paper’s purpose, then, is to illuminate a concrete contemporary phenomenon through the lens of agonistic theory and, conversely, to use this struggle as an impetus to carve out and address weaknesses in (...) the theory of agonism.I defend an ‘agonistic approach’ to the struggle against two alternatives — first, the claim that there is, conceptually, no ‘real’ conflict between social justice and free speech, and second, the strategy to ‘take sides’ in the conflict. By taking seriously the agonistic core idea that struggle and conflict can be valuable and productive expressions of plurality and inclusivity, I argue that this struggle should be approached as an agonistic conflict — as the welcome and important expression of a diversity of views on central social, moral and political questions.I also show, however, how retaining the focus on the real-life struggle between advocates of critical social justice and free-speech sheds light on the inconsistencies of much agonistic thought. In particular, I will criticize those agonists who limit their conception of the ‘agon’ to respectful struggles, and those who see the agon merely as a tool of emancipation for oppressed groups. Against these visions of agonism, I develop an anti-perfectionist, yet radical, account of agonism with the potential to serve as a guide in complex social and political conflicts. (shrink)

Is it ethical for the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court to consider political factors, such as peace processes, in selecting situations to investigate or cases to prosecute? During the early years of the court, a number of documents and statements from the Office of the Prosecutor suggested that there were occasions when it was. Two OTP policy papers issued in 2003 recommended that the prosecutor assess “all circumstances prevailing in the country or region concerned, including the nature and stage (...) of the conflict and any intervention by the international community,” and whether prosecution might “exacerbate or otherwise destabilize a conflict situation.” In the same spirit, the ICC's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, referred to his decision-making as a “dialogue between many actors” with a “strategic dimension... [that] involves all stakeholders.” This language suggested a process of consultation and coordination with local and international actors involved in conflict resolution to adapt international criminal justice to on-the-ground political realities. (shrink)

Although the concept of Rule of Law has been revived and developed vigorously by mid‐twentieth century conservative political theorists, contemporary legal positivists have not been impressed. The author reviews this confrontation, outlines the logic for a strong theory of Rule of Law, and surveys the leading attempts to provide compelling grounds for such a theory.

Recent judicial reforms after democratic transition have been substantial and relatively successful in Chile, but much less so in Argentina and Brazil. This article traces this variation in outcomes to the legal strategies of the prior authoritarian regimes. The Brazilian military regime of 1964–1985 was gradualist in its approach to the law, and had a high degree of civilian-military consensus in the legal sphere. It was not highly repressive in its deployment of lethal violence, and this combination of factors contributed (...) to a gradualist and consensual transition in which judicial reform was not placed high on the political agenda. The Argentine case of military rule between 1976 and 1983 was almost the opposite. The military sidestepped and even attacked the judiciary, engaging in almost entirely extrajudicial violence. This generated a “backlash” reform movement after the transition to democracy that was mostly retrospective and only partially successful. In Chile, in contrast, the military engineered a radical break with previous legality, engaged in violent repression, but made considerable efforts to reconstruct a judicial order. It was in the aftermath of this situation that reformers were able to push through a prospective and relatively successful judicial reform. This article's findings suggest that judicial reform may be more likely to succeed where the prior authoritarian regime was both repressive and legalistic, as in Chile, Poland, and South Africa, than where high degrees of repression were applied largely extrajudicially, as in Argentina, Cambodia, and Guatemala, or where the authoritarian regime was legalistic but not highly repressive, as in Brazil, Mexico, and the Philippines. (shrink)

This article revisits the long-standing question of the relations between ethics and politics in Machiavelli’s work, assessing its relevance to the ‘liberalism of fear’ in particular in the work of Judith Shklar, Bernard Williams and also John Dunn. The article considers ways in which Machiavelli has been a ‘negative’ resource for liberalism – for instance, as a presumed proponent of tyranny; but also ways in which even for the liberalism of fear he might be considered a ‘positive’ resource, above all (...) around the issues of political necessity and prudential judgement. (shrink)

The paper seeks to contribute to the transitional justice literature by overcoming the Democracy v. Justice debate. This debate is normatively implausible and prudentially self-defeating. Normatively, transitional justice will be conceptualised as an imperative of democratic equal concern. Prudentially, it can prevent further violence and provide an opportunity for initiating processes of democratic emotional socialisation. The resentment and indignation animating transitions should be acknowledged as markers of a sense of justice. As such, they can help the reproduction of democracy. However, (...) their public expression must be institutionally filtered through democratic norms. The consistent institutional instantiation of equal respect can educate and recuperate negative emotions for democracy. (shrink)

This article focuses on the most recent debates in a certain area of the ‘law and emotion’ field, namely the literature on the role of affect in the criminal law. Following the dominance of cognitivism in the philosophy of emotions, authors moved away from seeing emotions as contaminations on reason and examined how affective reactions could be accommodated within penal proceedings. The review is structured into two main components. I look first at contributions about the multi-dimensional presence of emotions within (...) ordinary criminal proceedings. Second, I examine work done on the use of criminal trials under the emotionally stressful circumstances of post-conflict societies. In the conclusion I sketch a theoretical proposal for moving the discussion forward. (shrink)

The article starts with the observation of an ambivalence inherent to the politics of juridification. On the one hand, some spheres of the life-world such as the family and the school are often places of exploitation, degradation and humiliation and therefore seem to require the implementation of legal protection for their members. At the same time, the demand for rights seems somehow to grasp too little, would be inadequate or even counterproductive. How can this ambivalence be politically dealt with? I (...) first briefly reconstruct Jürgen Habermas' concept of juridification. I believe that Habermas works with an image of the family and the school as communicatively constituted and juristically uncompromised milieux, which proves to be highly questionable. In a second step I consider Axel Honneth's theory of the absolutization of legal freedom as offered in his recent work Freedom's Right. Honneth sidesteps several problematic implications of the Habermasian thesis of colonization, but still tends to underestimate the dominant patriarchal power relations in the spheres of the family and the school. Finally, I pursue Honneth's own suggestion that a new notion of politics is required for understanding contemporary struggles for recognition, which overcomes the statist tendencies of liberalism. I therefore propose to shift the perspective on the phenomenon of juridification, viewing it instead from the standpoint of the agents themselves, by turning to Wendy Brown's feminist theory on the paradoxes of rights. (shrink)

Informal justice often is castigated as rough justice, procedurally unauthorized and substantively unrationalized and prone to error. Yet those same features are present, to some extent, in formal justice as well: they do not form the basis for any sharp categorical contrast between formal and informal justice. Furthermore, some roughness in justice may be no bad thing. Certain of those elements of roughness in formal justice are inextricably bound up with other features of formal justice that are rightly deemed morally (...) important. And rough informal justice can sometimes be used to change formal justice in more just directions. (shrink)

This article analyses the legal and ethical dimensions of the wide gap between commitments to universal human rights and the reality of their widespread and systematic abuse, particularly as related to poverty and inequality. The argument put forward is that, properly conceived, global legalism, that is, the quest to apply the rule of law across and among states and societies, and cosmopolitan ethics, both support restricting harms imposed on weak and vulnerable individuals worldwide by an unjust institutional order. Therefore, those (...) who have tended to value either a global rule of law or cosmopolitan ethics independently have good reason to pursue their requirements together. The article also considers the problem of legalism and cosmopolitanism being used by powerful agents in global politics to enhance their prerogatives and their freedoms from legal and ethical restraints. (shrink)

Current interpretations of the political theory of Judith Shklar focus to a disabling extent on her short, late article (1989); commentators take this late essay as representative of her work as a whole and thus characterize her as an anti-totalitarian, Cold War liberal. Other interpretations situate her political thought alongside followers of John Rawls and liberal political philosophy. Challenging the centrality of fear in Shklar's thought, this essay examines her writings on utopian and normative thought, the role of history in (...) political thinking and her notions of ordinary cruelty and injustice. In particular, it shifts emphasis away from an exclusive focus on her late writings in order to consider works published throughout her long career at Harvard University, from 1950 until her death in 1992. By surveying the range of Shklar's critical standpoints and concerns, it suggests that postwar American liberalism was not as monolithic as many interpreters have assumed. Through an examination of her attitudes towards her forebears and contemporaries, it shows why the dominant interpretations of Shklarmigrare flawed. In fact, Shklar moved restlessly between these two categories, and drew from each tradition. By thinking about both hope and memory, she bridged the gap between two distinct strands of postwar American liberalism. (shrink)

Judith Shklar’s liberalism of fear, a political and philosophical standpoint that emerges in her mature work, has ostensibly two defining characteristics. It is a sceptical approach that puts cruelty first among the vices. For that reason, it is considered to be both set apart from mainstream liberalism, in particular the liberalism of J. S. Mill and John Rawls, but also an important source of influence for political realists and nonideal theorists. However, I argue here that, in putting cruelty first among (...) the vices, Shklar also offers a value monist approach to political thought, one that she shares with Mill and Rawls as well. Each claims to have identified the general rule for the resolution of moral conflicts, although they disagree about what that rule is. Therefore, Shklar’s mature work combines scepticism with value monism. As such, it represents a radical departure from the value pluralist approach to moral conflict evident in her early work. Her commentators have not noticed either her mature monism or the move away from her earlier value pluralism, and this is explained by a tendency to see her mature work as offering simply a sceptical alternative to mainstream liberalism. (shrink)

What do the victims of tyranny owe each other? In this paper, I examine whether they can be condemned for betraying their friends, and I do so through a novel interpretation of Judith Shklar’s political thought. Shklar is a widely acknowledged and significant influence on non-ideal theory and political realism. However, there is also a previously unnoticed transformation between her early and mature work, for although she remains a sceptic her approach to moral conflict changes from value pluralism to value (...) monism. In addition, it is only in her mature work, as a monist, she believes tyranny cancels obligations of justice. I argue here that Shklar’s monism fails, and this in turn has important implications for political realism and non-ideal theory. While attention has been focused on developing a sceptical critique of ideal theory, this interpretation of Shklar’s work illustrates that greater awareness is needed of the pitfalls of monist strands of scepticism. (shrink)

This article seeks to examine how religious ideas that are not the focus of a particular halakhic question become the crux of the ruling, thereby molding it and dictating its bias. We will attempt to demonstrate this through a study of Jewish medical ethics, based on some of the rulings of one of the greatest halakhic decisors of the previous generation: Rabbi Eliezer Yehuda Waldenberg (1915–2006). Rabbi Waldenberg molds his rulings on the basis of a religious principle asserting that the (...) legitimacy of any medical procedure is qualified and limited. Rabbi Waldenberg rejects certain accepted medical practices, including plastic surgery, in vitro fertilization, and organ transplants. Even if these procedures are regarded by other halakhic decisors as being legitimate, for Rabbi Waldenberg they are ethically and religiously improper, and therefore they are halakhically forbidden. (shrink)

Feminist legal scholars have never cut the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada as much slack as the second. Yet the first, Justice Bertha Wilson, introduced the contextual method into the Court’s jurisprudence. Her approach to contextualism is consistent with one of three feminist legal methods that Katharine T. Bartlett identifies. More specifically, it is consistent with Bartlett’s feminist practical reasoning. However, Justice Wilson’s contextualism is not without its critics. The most challenging, Ruth Colker, contends it must (...) work in conjunction with a distinctive substantive principle. Justice Wilson took a different approach, aligning the contextual method with the constitutional principle of proportionality. Thus construed, this paper argues, contextualism represents a new approach to feminist judging. (shrink)

A diverse range of actors, from practitioners and academics to civil society groups and activists, appear to see hope in international law for the advancement of their causes. This article examines whether this optimism is well-founded. It explores whether international law can serve as an agent of social change, and whether it can accommodate radical changes in social order. It begins by exposing a formalist stance that is immanent to much ‘legal activist’ discourse. It then explores links between this mode (...) of jurisprudential thought and idealist epistemology. Drawing from the philosophy of Theodor Adorno, and in particular his notion of ‘identity-thinking’, it uncovers structural connections between formalism, idealism, law and economy that call into question international law’s socially-transformative potential. The perspective advanced in this article falls somewhere between the polarities of opportunity and impasse, seeking to acknowledge the importance of legal strategies in safeguarding the disenfranchised, while remaining alive to their potential dangers and limitations. (shrink)

Prior to Citizen’s United, particular types of corporate spending for purposes of influencing US-election-outcomes were limited due to an inherent skepticism of corporate influence in American politics. It was presumed that where corporations accessed wealth and resources for purposes of electing candidates that best serve corporate interests, American politics would be corrupted—indeed: democracy that is bought and sold. In the US, the juridical is entirely systematized by the ethos of the legal profession: legalism. It is the way in which the (...) law is supposed to be reasoned upon, deliberated upon, and decided upon. Although the Majority in Citizens expressed its reversal of law that limits corporate influence in American politics in legalese—the terminology within the system of legalism, the conservative Majority took an opportunity to establish conservative ideology as law—an ideology that subscribes to the equivocation between corporations and individuals, and, corporate spending with protected free-speech. (shrink)