After distinguishing different species of Legal Moralism I outline and defend a modest, positive Legal Moralism, according to which we have good reason to criminalize some type of conduct if it constitutes a public wrong. Some of the central elements of the argument will be: the need to remember that the criminal law is a political, not a moral practice, and therefore that in asking what kinds of conduct we have good reason to criminalize, we must begin not with the (...) entire realm of wrongdoing, but with conduct falling within the public realm of our civic life; the need to look at the different processes of criminalization, and to ask what kinds of consideration can properly figure in those processes; the need to attend to the relationship, and the essential differences, between criminal law and other modes of legal regulation. (shrink)

In response to Lawrence Solum's advocacy of a ‘virtue–centred theory of judging’, I argue that there is indeed important work to be done in identifying and characterising those qualities of character that constitute judicial virtues – those qualities that a person needs if she is to judge well (though I criticise Solum's account of one of the five pairs of judicial vices and virtues that he identifies – avarice and temperance). However, Solum's more ambitious claims – that a judge's vice (...) necessarily corrupts her decisions, and that in at least some contexts we must define a legally correct decision as one that would be reached by a virtuous judge – should be rejected: we can undermine the former by attending to the requirements of due process, and the latter by attending to the ways in which a judge would try to justify her decision. (shrink)

Discussions of responsibility typically focus on the person who is held responsible: what are the conditions or criteria of responsibility; what can be done to or demanded of a person who is responsible? This paper shifts focus onto those who hold, rather than those who are held, responsible: what do we owe to those whom we hold responsible? After distinguishing responsibility as answerability from responsibility as liability, it attends mainly to the former, and points out the ways in which it (...) is multiply relational: I am responsible for something to someone who has the standing to call me to account for it, under the norms of some particular practice. Responsibility as thus understood is also reciprocal: if you are to be answerable to me, I must treat you with a certain respect, attend seriously to your answer, and be ready to answer to you myself. The paper explores some of the implications of this point both for our moral dealings with each other, and for criminal law and the criminal trial. (shrink)

I discuss a significant distinction between two different applications of the principle of double effect. It serves sometimes to distinguish the intended effects of an action from side-Effects which are "relevant" to it, As providing reasons against it, For which the agent must admit responsibility, And of which he is the intentional agent; and sometimes to distinguish intended effects from side-Effects which are "irrelevant" to the action, As to which the agent denies responsibility and intentional agency.

Changing paradigms about moving forward -- The notion of progress in the past -- The notion of progress today -- Self-leadership and progress -- Toward a moral compass -- The right thing in pre-millennial context -- The right thing in current context -- Defining and polishing our moral compass -- Moving forward while doing the right thing -- About choice and reality -- Five moral pitfalls to avoid -- Moral theories : some pros and cons -- Five moral handles for (...) every type of decision-making. (shrink)

The trans-jurisdictional discourse on criminal justice is often hampered by mutual misunderstandings. The translation of legal concepts from English into other languages and vice versa is subject to ambiguity and potential error: the same term may assume different meanings in different legal contexts. More importantly, legal systems may choose differing theoretical or policy approaches to resolving the same issues, which sometimes – but not always – lead to similar outcomes. This book is the second volume of a series in which (...) eminent scholars from German-speaking and Anglo-American jurisdictions work together on comparative essays that explore foundational concepts of criminal law and procedure. Each topic is illuminated from German and Anglo-American perspectives, and differences and similarities are analysed. (shrink)

This book deals with the theoretical, methodological, and empirical implications of bounded rationality in the operation of institutions. It focuses on decisions made under uncertainty, and presents a reliable strategy of knowledge acquisition for the design and implementation of decision-support systems. Based on the distinction between the inner and outer environment of decisions, the book explores both the cognitive mechanisms at work when actors decide, and the institutional mechanisms existing among and within organizations that make decisions fairly predictable. While a (...) great deal of work has been done on how organizations act as patterns of events for (boundedly) rational decisions, less effort has been devoted to study under which circumstances organizations cease to act as such reliable mechanisms. Through an empirical strategy on open-ended response data from a survey among junior judges, the work pursues two main goals. The first one is to explore the limits of "institutional rationality" of the Spanish lower courts on-call service, an optimal scenario to observe decision-making under uncertainty. The second aim is to achieve a better understanding of the kind of uncertainty under which inexperienced decision-makers work. This entails exploring the demands imposed by problems and the knowledge needed to deal with them, making this book also a study on expertise achievement in institutional environments. This book combines standard multivariate statistical methods with machine learning techniques such as multidimensional scaling and topic models, treating text as data. Doing so, the book contributes to the collaboration between empirical social scientific approaches and the community of scientists that provide the set of tools and methods to make sense of the fastest growing resource of our time: data. (shrink)

After discussing the limitations inherent to all set-theoretic reflection principles akin to those studied by A. Lévy et. al. in the 1960s, we introduce new principles of reflection based on the general notion of Structural Reflection and argue that they are in strong agreement with the conception of reflection implicit in Cantor’s original idea of the unknowability of the Absolute, which was subsequently developed in the works of Ackermann, Lévy, Gödel, Reinhardt, and others. We then present a comprehensive survey of (...) results showing that different forms of the new principle of Structural Reflection are equivalent to well-known large cardinal axioms covering all regions of the large-cardinal hierarchy, thereby justifying the naturalness of the latter. (shrink)

El objetivo principal de este trabajo es examinar cómo se conceptualizó la noción de teatro judío entre los años de la aventura boulangista y las postrimerías del afer Dreyfus, período histórico en que se formó la cultura política contrarrevolucionaria. A través de los escritos y críticas teatrales de las revistas y periódicos nacionalistas y antisemitas más representativos, tales como La Cocarde, La Libre Parole, Le Soleil, L’Œuvre, L’Action française bi-mensuelle, L’Action française y La Revue Critique des Idées et des Livres, (...) el artículo pretende analizar los tropos culturales, intelectuales y expresivos que sirvieron de base para modelar el concepto de teatro judío como expresión racial de la desazón de los sectores nacionalistas antisemitas a los profundos cambios provocados por la modernidad. (shrink)

Este artículo describe el desarrollo de un proyecto colaborativo compartido entre escuela y universidad. En este caso, entre la Universidad de Vic y la escuela Pompeu Fabra de Salt. En este proyecto los protagonistas de la experiencia son los alumnos del tercer ciclo de primaria de la escuela Pompeu Fabra de Salt (Gironès) y el grupo de trece alumnos de la Universidad de Vic matriculados en la asignatura Didáctica de las Ciencias Sociales, del doble grado en Maestro de Educación Infantil (...) y Primaria en mención inglesa. Esta colaboración se ha vertebrado en torno a la participación del grupo de primaria en el proyecto interdisciplinar "Reporteros de la historia”. (shrink)

This paper begins by examining Erich Fromm’s “Manifesto and Program” written for the Socialist Party in 1959 or 1960, and addresses a simple question: Why would Fromm speak of something so apparently arcane as “prophetic messianism,” in his socialist program? When he insists that we have forgotten thatsocialism is “rooted in the spiritual tradition which came to us from prophetic messianism, the gospels, humanism, and from the enlightenment philosophers,” is this simply a literary flourish, a concession to liberalism, or religious (...) sentimentality? Part I, written by Nick Braune, answers the question by examining Fromm’ssocialist organizing commitments in the context of the late 1950s. Part II, written by Joan Braune, offers further defense of the term “prophetic messianism,” distinguishes two types of messianism, and suggests that Fromm may be attempting to address a problem in the Frankfurt School. (shrink)

Going beyond the creolisation theories of Brathwaite and Glissant, I attempt to develop ideas concerning the gendering of creolisation, and a historicising of affects within it. Addressing affects as ‘physiological things’ contextualised in the history of the Caribbean slave plantation, I seek, importantly, to delineate a trajectory and development of a specific Creole history in relation to affects. Brathwaite's proposition that ‘the most significant (and lasting) inter-cultural creolisation took place’ within the ‘intimate’ space of ‘sexual relations’ is key to my (...) argument. In the light of this, I consider how Creole cultural knowledge about affect—as the primary motivational system inclusive of fear, anger, outrage and so on — might be identified, and what constitutes such Creole knowledge within which affect might be embedded. How might Glissant's relationality and Creole literary texts add to this knowledge? I focus primarily on three texts: Clarke's The Polished Hoe, Collins’ The Colour of Forgetting and Morejón's ‘Amo a mi amo’/‘l Love My Master’. Each text on which I draw is selected for its intersectional representation of gender relations, ‘knowledge about sexual difference’ and its representation of Creole subjectivities within the context problematised here as the ‘demonic ground’. Moreover, as auto-theorising texts, they represent both narrative and meta-narrative of a creolising of affects in and against the economy of the slave plantation. Each represents also a stage or aspect of the development of subjectivities and an affective community that inform this intervention concerned with theorising against consolidated, universalising and Eurocentric conceptualisations of affect. In the process, I attempt to offer a differentiated cartography and literary archaeology of affect. (shrink)

El presente artículo se propone realizar un acercamiento a las evocaciones y relecturas del motivo husserliano de la reducción en la obra del escritor y crítico literario Maurice Blanchot. Con este propósito, y situándose en el camino abierto por algunos trabajos que han estudiado sus posibles relaciones con la fenomenología, considera los motivos blanchotianos de la angustia, la soledad esencial, lo neutro y el retorno en tanto admiten ser caracterizados como figuras límite de la reducción. La modulación de esta particular (...) suspensión radical a estas cuatro figuras permite esbozar también la evolución de su pensamiento y de sus relaciones con las filosofías de Heidegger y Levinas. Aunque ciertamente excéntrica con respecto a la fenomenología, la obra de Blanchot no pretende ser sino un acceso fiel a las paradojas y al modo propio de manifestación de las cosas literarias mismas. (shrink)

Interest in credit ratings agencies and their role in financial markets is at an all-time high. Concerns about a lack of transparency concerning process, conflicts of interest, and limited competition are frequently discussed by politicians, regulators and other commentators. These issues we term the credit ratings agency trinity of solicitude. We shed some light on this trinity by considering the unique relationship that exists between corporate borrowers and the CRAs they engage to rate their securities. The exchange relationships literature is (...) used to create a model where commitment plays a central role. Technical qualities, relationship qualities and dependence are theorised as antecedents of commitment, which is described by two constructs of affective commitment and calculative commitment. The issuer’s intention to remain with the CRA, their loyalty, is the consequence of commitment. The model is operationalized by means of a survey questionnaire administered to issuers of corporate debt in the United Kingdom. As expected, perceptions of the quality of the relationship and affective commitment play an important role in CRA-issuer relations. However, contrary to expectations, the technical quality of the rating and issuer dependence on the CRA play little role in determining commitment and continuance. The implications of these findings are discussed along with areas for future research. (shrink)

Crimes Against Humanity and Hostes Generis Humani In ‘The Enemy of All Humanity’, David Luban provides an insightful and plausible account of the idea of the hostis generis humani (one that shows that the hostis need not be understood to be an outlaw), and of the distinctive character of the crimes against humanity that the hostis commits. However, I argue in this paper, his suggestion that the hostis is answerable to a moral community of humanity (in whose name the ICC (...) must thus claim to speak) is not tenable. Once we recognize the intimate connection between criminal law and political community, we can see that the hostis should answer to the local, domestic political community in and against which he commits his crimes; and that the proper role of the International Criminal Court, acting in the name of the community of nations, is to provide a second-best substitute for such answering when the local polity cannot or will not hold him to account. (shrink)

Purpose– This paper aims to retrieve relevant aspects of the work of idealist thinker T.H. Green to improve comprehension of, and policy responses to, various dilemmas facing contemporary “information societies”.Design/methodology/approach– The paper is an exercise in interdisciplinary conceptual research, seeking a new synthesis that draws upon a range of ethical, metaphysical, empirical and policy texts and ideas. It is an application of moral and political principles to post-industrial problems, part of an ongoing international effort to develop viable normative approaches to (...) the emergent information society. The background research includedin situstudy of archival papers.Findings– Green’s version of idealism illuminates current, technologically induced shifts in our understandings of important categories such as self, substance and space. The paper finds that Green’s doctrine of the common good, his alternative to the (still prevalent) school of utilitarian welfarism, combined with his famously “positive” theory of the state, is highly relevant as a normative template for applied philosophy and policy. The article demonstrates its applicability to three vital contemporary issues: freedom of information, intellectual property and personal privacy. It concludes that Green’s work provides exceptional resources for an original, anti-technocratic, theory of the information society as good society.Practical implications– It is hoped that, as part of the wider rediscovery of the work of Green and other idealists, the paper will have some impact on public policy.Originality/value– The paper contains a new scholarly interpretation of Green’s theories of the common good and of the state. In addition, it is believed to be the first major attempt to apply idealism to the information society and its problems. (shrink)

abstract Focusing on the criminal law, I discuss three ways in which analytical philosophers might contribute to the development or health of the law (and of legal theory). The first is as humble under-labourers, who seek only to clarify legal rules and doctrines, but not to criticise them. This modest conception of the role of philosophy, however, proves to be untenable: clarification must become rational reconstruction — an attempt to make rational sense of the law; and rational reconstruction must involve (...) at least an internal critique, which appraises the law in terms of ends, values or principles that the reconstruction discovers within the law. Such an internal critique must then also point beyond itself, to an external critique that appraises law in terms of the broader and deeper political and moral values by which states should be structured; the paper ends by noting some of the problems that such an external critique faces, and some of the problems that philosophers must face in trying to engage with the world of public policy. (shrink)

Ideas of prevention (the prevention of harms, or of wrongs, or of crimes) have always played a significant role in accounts of the proper aims of a system of criminal law, but in recent years they have come to play a more prominent and disturbing part in developments in criminal law policies—most obviously, but by no means only, in the USA and Britain. Governments have sought to meet (or to be seen to be meeting) a range of perceived threats, such (...) as terrorism, organised crime, and various kinds of sexual predation, by looking for more effective modes of prevention. Sometimes this involves expanding the criminal law to capture more types of preparatory conduct, or conduct (including various kinds of possession) that might facilitate the commission of target crimes; sometimes it involves expanding non-criminal provisions for preventive detention, or other kinds of restriction on the liberty of those thought to be dangerous (restrictions that may themselves be backed by criminal sanctio. (shrink)