In the last years of his life, Gerald C. MacCallum, Jr., defied illness to continue his work on the philosophy of law. This book is a monument to MacCallum’s effort, containing fourteen of his essays, five of them published here for the first time. Two of those previously published are widely admired and reprinted: “Legislative Intent,” certainly one of the best papers ever published on its topic, and “Negative and Positive Freedom,” which offered a new way of looking at a (...) distinction that had been canonical for the last two centuries. To complete MacCallum’s unfinished pieces, Marcus G. Singer and Rex Martin painstakingly consulted MacCallum’s notes for planned revisions. MacCallum discusses legal reasoning, the application of rules, the interpretation of statutes and constitutional provisions, and the relation of these matters to morality and justice. In the last decade of his working life, he became greatly concerned with the interrelated themes of integrity, autonomy, conscience, and violence. He wished to relate competition to morality and justice to adversarial systems of law. These themes are woven together in Legislative Intent and constitute the main subject of some of the essays. MacCallum was engaged in a constant search for truth and understanding, and in his life and work lived up to Emerson’s vision of the “American Scholar” as a “human being thinking.” These essays are informed by the author’s deep curiosity, penetrating intelligence, wide knowledge, and outstanding character. They will be treasured wherever these characteristics and true philosophy are treasured. (shrink)

The popular slogan that one ought to fight for what he believes right appears to point a way for persons to witness the moral seriousness of their interest in reform. But exactly what way does it point, and, in particular, does it enjoin resort to violence for the sake of what one believes right ? Pursuit of this question exposes some roots of our indecisive and often confused views about the acceptable means of revolution and reform and the eventual r61e (...) of violence therein. Common understandings of ?violence? and ?fight for? do not carry us far. Further, there are doubtless differences in how the slogan's enjoinment of ?fighting? (and thus, if at all, of violence) is understood to be limited. These differences and the issues underlying them are exposed when we ask whether the slogan is to be understood to enjoin fighting or manners of fighting that might be called premature, gratuitous, or wasteful, and when we ask whether the ?ought? in the slogan is to be understood as, at best, a prima facie ought. (shrink)