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134Commodity FetishismCanadian Journal of Philosophy 17 (4). 1987.Criticism and sarcasm are interspersed with description and analysis throughout Marx's work. Most of the criticism is aimed at one or another side of a single target: what Marx sees as capitalism's pretensions of freedom, equality, and prosperity in the face of exploitation and recurrent crises. But the remarks on commodity fetishism in the first volume of Capital seem to be directed at a different target. Here Marx tells us that a commodity is ‘a queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtletie…Read more
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38Law and DisagreementPhilosophical Review 110 (4): 611. 2001.The most obvious way of settling disagreements peacefully is to take a vote. Yet, as Jeremy Waldron points out, the attitudes of philosophers and political theorists towards majority voting have ranged from indifference to hostility. Piled on top of all this scorn for legislation comes further scorn from social choice theorists, who insist that majority rule is useless as a means of making decisions.
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63Three duties to rescue: Moral, civil, and criminal (review)Law and Philosophy 19 (6): 751-779. 2000.No Abstract
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63Practical Rationality and Preference: Essays for David Gauthier (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2001.What are preferences and are they reasons for action? Is it rational to cooperate with others even if that entails acting against one's preferences? The dominant position in philosophy on the topic of practical rationality is that one acts so as to maximize the satisfaction of one's preferences. This view is most closely associated with the work of David Gauthier, and in this collection of essays some of the most innovative philosophers working in this field explore the controversies surrounding…Read more
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1Jean Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 8 (3): 94-96. 1988.
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2David Miller, Market, State, and Community: Theoretical Foundations of Market Socialism Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 11 (4): 278-279. 1991.
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175. Private Right III: Contract and ConsentIn Force and freedom: Kant's legal and political philosophy, Harvard University Press. pp. 107-144. 2009.
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Moral, Social, and Political Philosophy Phl 277yCustom Publishing Service, University of Toronto Bookstores. 1999.
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6The Jurisprudence Annual Lecture 2015—Means and EndsJurisprudence 6 (1): 1-23. 2015.Legal doctrine often focuses on means rather than ends. In an action for breach of contract, the court asks only whether promisor performed as promised, and takes no account of what either promisor or promisee expected to gain by the transaction. The criminal law inquires into how the criminal was trying to accomplish some purpose, not what the purpose was. Most crimes are committed to get money, a purpose of which the law otherwise approves. This focus on means is often said to be superficial, …Read more
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62Law students are usually told that the purpose of damages is to make it as if a wrong had never happened.3 Although torts professors are good at explaining this idea to their students, it is the source of much academic perplexity. Money cannot really make serious losses go away, and it seems a cruel joke to say that money can make an injured person “whole.” Worse still, if money could make an injured person whole, injuring someone and then paying them seems just as good as not injuring them at a…Read more
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10Kant and the circumstances of justiceIn Elisabeth Ellis (ed.), Kant's Political Theory: Interpretations and Applications, Pennsylvania State University Press. 2012.
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1Self-certification and the Moral Aims of the LawCanadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 25 (1): 201-217. 2012.In Legality, Scott Shapiro introduces what he calls the “Planning Theory of Law.” Shapiro introduces the idea of a plan with examples from outside of the law. He then must provide an account of what is distinctive about law, such that the other plan-based social orders are not also legal systems. He gives two answers: first, a legal system is organized by a moral aim. Second, a legal system is self-certifying. I examine these in turn, and argue that each can only characterize what is distinctive…Read more
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55Law and Morality: Readings in Legal PhilosophyUniversity of Toronto Press. 2001.Filling a long-standing need for a Canadian textbook in the philosophy of law, this anthology includes articles, readings, and cases in legal philosophy to give students the conceptual tools necessary to consider the general problems of jurisprudence.