-
2Civil DisobedienceIn Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Metaphysics Research Lab. 2014.
-
26On the Ethics of InteractingJournal of Applied Philosophy. forthcoming.Ordinary interactions are the primary vehicle through which we show respect, give social pleasure, and grease the wheels of healthy sociality. When we do an interactional wrong to someone, we not only convey disrespect by disregarding their interactional needs, but also cause them social pain and erode healthy social relations. Interactional ethics – the study of the ethics of interacting – concerns both our conduct within our interactions and our broader interactional style. The existing philos…Read more
-
16Freedom of Association: It's Not What You ThinkOxford Journal of Legal Studies 35 (2): 267-282. 2015.This article shows that associative freedom is not what we tend to think it is. Contrary to standard liberal thinking, it is neither a general moral permission to choose the society most acceptable to us nor a content-insensitive claim-right akin to the other personal freedoms with which it is usually lumped such as freedom of expression and freedom of religion. It is at most (i) a highly restricted moral permission to associate subject to constraints of consent, necessity and burdensomeness; (i…Read more
-
32Review of Joseph Raz and Ulrike Heuer: The Roots of Normativity (review)Ethics 134 (1): 168-172. 2023.
-
11Freedom of AssociationIn Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Kimberley Brownlee & David Coady (eds.), A Companion to Applied Philosophy, Wiley. 2016.This chapter explores the contours of our freedoms to enter into and leave particular associations with particular people. The chapter highlights the fact that often our associations with each other are morally complex and, indeed, morally wrong. This moral complexity stems partly from the fact that associations are necessarily intersubjective: they affect the social needs, claims, and freedoms of at least two people. When our associations are morally wrong, we must determine whether they can be…Read more
-
34Being Sure of Each Other: An Essay on Social Rights and FreedomsOxford University Press. 2020.Brownlee rethinks human rights theory to reflect the fact that we are deeply social creatures. Our core social needs, for meaningful social inclusion, are more important than, and essential to, our civil, political, and economic needs. This grounds a right against social deprivation and a right to the resources to sustain other people.
-
26The Human Right to Adequate Social Inclusion: A Reply to CriticsCriminal Law and Philosophy 17 (2): 491-506. 2023.This Reply offers my answers to Cheshire Calhoun’s, Elizabeth Brake’s, and Monika Betzler’s wonderful contributions to the Criminal Law and Philosophy symposium on Being Sure of Each Other (2020). Their contributions focus respectively on the conceptual and normative foundations of my defence of our human rights to have adequate social inclusion, the harms that might flow from recognising such rights as human rights, and the impact such rights can have on our most intimate relations. My replies …Read more
-
2Do we have a human right to the political determinants of health?In Rowan Cruft, S. Matthew Liao & Massimo Renzo (eds.), Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights, Oxford University Press Uk. 2015.
-
PunishmentIn John Tasioulas (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Philosophy of Law, Cambridge University Press. 2020.
-
82Justifying Punishment: A Response to Douglas Husak (review)Criminal Law and Philosophy 2 (2): 123-129. 2008.In ‘Why Criminal Law: A Question of Content?’, Douglas Husak argues that an analysis of the justifiability of the criminal law depends upon an analysis of the justifiability of state punishment. According to Husak, an adequate justification of state punishment both must show why the state is permitted to infringe valuable rights such as the right not to be punished and must respond to two distinct groups of persons who may demand a justification for the imposition of punishment, namely, individu…Read more
-
33Review of Horder Jeremy, Excusing Crime: Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005, xx + 295 pp (review)Criminal Law and Philosophy 3 (1): 103-105. 2009.
-
40The Competent Judge ProblemRatio 29 (3): 312-326. 2015.We face an epistemic problem in competently judging some types of experience. The problem arises when an experience either defies our efforts to assess its quality, such as a traumatic event, or compromises our abilities to assess quality in general, such as starvation. In the latter type of case, the competent judge problem is actually a paradox since the experience undermines our competence to judge at the same time that it gives us competence to judge it against other experiences. The problem…Read more
-
163The communicative aspects of civil disobedience and lawful punishmentCriminal Law and Philosophy 1 (2): 179-192. 2007.A parallel may be drawn between the communicative aspect of civil disobedience and the communicative aspect of lawful punishment by the state. In punishing an offender, the state seeks to communicate both its condemnation of the crime committed and its desire for repentance and reformation on the part of the offender. Similarly, in civilly disobeying the law, a disobedient seeks to convey both her condemnation of a certain law or policy and her desire for recognition that a lasting change in pol…Read more
-
581Social deprivation and criminal justiceIn Francois Tanguay-Renaud & James Stribopoulos (eds.), Rethinking Criminal Law Theory: New Canadian Perspectives in the Philosophy of Domestic, Transnational, and International Criminal Law, Hart Publishing. 2012.This article challenges the use of social deprivation as a punishment, and offers a preliminary examination of the human rights implications of exile and solitary confinement. The article considers whether a human right against coercive social deprivation is conceptually redundant, as there are recognised rights against torture, extremely cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment as well as rights to basic health care, education, and security, which might encompass what this right protects. The ar…Read more
-
70Retributive, Restorative and Ritualistic JusticeOxford Journal of Legal Studies 30 (2): 385-397. 2010.Few defences of retribution in criminal justice make a plausible case for the view that punishment plays a necessary role in restoring relations between offenders, victims and the community. Even fewer defences of retribution make a plausible appeal to the interpersonal practice of apologizing as a symbolically adequate model for criminal justice. This review article considers Christopher Bennett’s engaging defence of an apology ritual in criminal justice, an account of justifiable punishment th…Read more
-
95I- The Lonely Heart Breaks: On the Right to Be a Social ContributorAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 90 (1): 27-48. 2016.This paper uncovers a distinctively social type of injustice that lies in the kinds of wrongs we can do to each other specifically as social beings. In this paper, social injustice is not principally about unfair distributions of socio-economic goods among citizens. Instead, it is about the ways we can violate each other’s fundamental rights to lead socially integrated lives in close proximity and relationship with other people. This paper homes in on a particular type of social injustice, which…Read more
-
20The Offender's Part in the DialogueIn Rowan Cruft, Matthew H. Kramer & Mark R. Reiff (eds.), Crime, punishment, and responsibility: the jurisprudence of Antony Duff, Oxford University Press. pp. 54. 2011.
-
126Reasons and idealsPhilosophical Studies 151 (3): 433-444. 2010.This paper contributes to the debate on whether we can have reason to do what we are unable to do. I take as my starting point two papers recently published in Philosophical Studies , by Bart Streumer and Ulrike Heuer, which defend the two dominant opposing positions on this issue. Briefly, whereas Streumer argues that we cannot have reason to do what we are unable to do, Heuer argues that we can have reason to do what we are unable to do when we can get closer to success but cannot have reason …Read more
-
122Legal obligation as a duty of deferenceLaw and Philosophy 27 (6). 2008.An enduring question in political and legal philosophy concerns whether we have a general moral obligation to follow the law. In this paper, I argue that Philip Soper’s intuitively appealing effort to give new life to the idea of legal obligation by characterising it as a duty of deference is ultimately unpersuasive. Soper claims that people who understand what a legal system is and admit that it is valuable must recognise that they would be morally inconsistent to deny that they owe deference t…Read more
-
50Reply to CriticsCriminal Law and Philosophy 10 (4): 721-739. 2016.This article responds to the four contributors to the book symposium on Conscience and Conviction: The Case for Civil Disobedience. Those four contributors are Thomas Hill Jr, David Lefkowitz, William Smith, and Daniel Weinstock. Hill examines the concepts of conviction and conscience ; Smith discusses conviction and then analyses the right to civil disobedience and my humanistic arguments for it ; Weinstock explores democratic challenges for civil disobedience ; and Lefkowitz assesses the merit…Read more
-
54What’s virtuous about the law?Legal Theory 21 (1): 1-17. 2015.Debates about our moral relation to the law typically focus on the moral force of law. Often, the question asked is: Do we have a moral duty to follow the law? Recently, that question has been given a virtue-ethical formulation: Is there a virtue in abiding by the law? This paper considers our moral relation to the law in terms of virtue but focuses on a different question from the traditional ones. The question here is: Can the law model virtue in beneficial ways that enable us to cultivate vir…Read more
-
16Review of C. A. J. Coady, Messy Morality: The Challenge of Politics (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (6). 2009.
-
903Normative Principles and Practical Ethics: A Response to O’NeillJournal of Applied Philosophy 26 (3): 231-237. 2009.abstract This article briefly examines Onora O'Neill's account of the relation between normative principles and practical ethical problems with an eye to suggesting that philosophers of practical ethics have reason to adopt fairly high moral ambitions to be edifying and instructive both as educators and as advisors on public policy debates.
-
103The civil disobedience of Edward Snowden: A reply to William ScheuermanPhilosophy and Social Criticism 42 (10): 965-970. 2016.This article responds to William Scheuerman’s analysis of Edward Snowden as someone whose acts fit within John Rawls’ account of civil disobedience understood as a public, non-violent, conscientious breach of law performed with overall fidelity to law and a willingness to accept punishment. It rejects the narrow Rawlsian notion in favour of a broader notion of civil disobedience understood as a constrained, conscientious and communicative breach of law that demonstrates opposition to law or poli…Read more
-
1Protest and punishment : the dialogue between civil disobedients and the lawIn Michael D. A. Freeman & Ross Harrison (eds.), Law and philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2007.
APA Western Division
Vancouver, Canada
Areas of Specialization
1 more
Value Theory |
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Law |
Social and Political Philosophy |
The Concept of Human Rights |
Areas of Interest
Value Theory |
Social and Political Philosophy |
The Concept of Human Rights |