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30Bystanders and Shared ResponsibilityIn Saba Bazargan-Forward & Deborah Perron Tollefsen (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Collective Responsibility, Routledge. pp. 313-26. 2020.This chapter surveys the variety of ways in which people who may appear at first to be bystanders, or mere bystanders, to wrongdoing, harm or danger might instead share responsibility with other actors. My discussion divides cases into three rough, non- exclusive categories: (a) shared responsibility for wrongs and harms; (b) shared responsibility to provide aid; and (c) shared responsibility to enforce moral norms. The third category has received the least discussion to date. My modest goal fo…Read more
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27Collective Responsibility and Duties to RespondSocial Theory and Practice 27 (3): 455-471. 2001.
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25Offenders, the Making of Amends and the StateIn Gerry Johnstone & Daniel W. van Ness (eds.), Handbook of Restorative Justice, . pp. 192--207. 2007.This essay asks whether restorative justice practices in criminal legal systems are consistent with the aims of a liberal state.
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23Goldberg, John C. P., and Zipursky, Benjamin C. Recognizing Wrongs. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020. Pp. 392. $45.00 (cloth) (review)Ethics 131 (3): 610-614. 2021.
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22The Ethics of Forgiveness, ed. Christel Fricke (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2011. 2011.
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21Uncertainty in everyday lifeThe Philosophers' Magazine 66 77-83. 2014.We sometimes witness events that might be dangerous (e.g. that might end in someone being abused) but that might not be. These cases involve various kinds of uncertainty. How does a morally responsible bystander respond? This essay describes and evaluates Active Bystander training programs.
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18Gardner on Corrective Justice: Comment on From Personal Life to Private LawJerusalem Review of Legal Studies 19 (1): 21-33. 2019.This article argues that John Gardner’s theory of corrective justice in _From Personal Life to Private Law_ relies on an overly narrow account of wrongdoing, one that it too heavily influenced by law to capture the broader conception of corrective justice that is his topic. I will suggest that these problems are avoided by a reconciliation theory of corrective justice.
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18Incorrigible Norms: Foundationalist Theories of Normative AuthoritySouthern Journal of Philosophy 38 (4): 633-649. 2000.
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16Richardson on moral innovationPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 106 (1): 245-250. 2023.Henry Richardson’s _Articulating the Moral Community_ develops an account of moral innovation, the process by which new moral norms come to be authoritatively binding and new ethical judgments come to be objectively true. In this essay, I argue Richardson’s proposed process of moral innovation is likely to be exceedingly rare, unnecessary for solving the problems posed by what he calls “objective moral gaps,” and not necessarily more desirable than moral innovation via local convention.
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15Do Wrongdoers Have a Right to Make Amends?Social Theory and Practice 29 (2): 325-341. 2003.The recent literature on criminal justice has yielded an intriguing suggestion: that someone who does wrong has a right to make amends. In this essay, I evaluate arguments for and against this claim with regard to cases of both criminal wrongdoing and private wrongs. I conclude that the balance of arguments speaks in favor of a right to make amends. This conclusion has ramifications for the just design of criminal sanctions, and these will also be addressed here.
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4Standing and AccountabilityAmerican Journal of Jurisprudence. forthcoming.Increasingly, philosophers who write about moral responsibility and accountability practices invoke the concept of “standing,” a term they claim to borrow from legal contexts. Yet critics point out that these philosophers have been maddeningly unclear about what standing is. Worse yet, no single account of the concept of “standing” seems to accommodate its current usage. This essay presents a thin account of standing, defends its usefulness in philosophical analyses of accountability practices, …Read more
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2Christopher Kutz, Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 22 (1): 43-45. 2002.
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2Tort Processes and Relational RepairIn John Oberdiek (ed.), Philosophical Foundations of the Law of Torts, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 231-49. 2014.The last twenty-five years or so of thought about tort law have been remarkably productive and dynamic, as the dominance of the law and economics model has been challenged by theories that reintroduce the language of corrective justice. Over this same time period, theorizing about corrective justice has sprung up in response to a wide range of social, political and moral issues. I have in mind work on restorative theories in criminal justice; on postwar justice; on truth commissions, political r…Read more
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1The Standing to ForgiveIn Glen Pettigrove & Robert Enright (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Psychology of Forgiveness, Routledge. pp. 323-335. 2023.This chapter reviews and evaluates the most common strategies for defending the view that, whatever other reasons might support forgiving in a particular case, forgiveness is defective when the person purporting to forgive lacks standing. Various arguments in favor of limiting standing are used in order to clarify what standing might be. In the end, I endorse an interpretation of standing as the possession of a normative power, which allows for the possibility of third-party forgiveness in some …Read more
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1Joseph Butler on ForgivenessIn Johannes Brachtendorf & Stephan Herzberg (eds.), Vergebung: Philosophische Perspektiven auf ein Problemfeld der Ethik, Mentis. pp. 139-47. 2014.While Charles Griswold's interpretation of Bishop Butler's theory of forgiveness is an improvement over the standard reading, it leaves Butler unable to distinguish between forgiveness and justice. The emotions and actions that are offered as definitive of forgiveness instead merely show that the agent is not unjust. However, if we refocus our interpretation of Butler, we can see how he might disentangle forgiveness and justice.
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Moral Injury and the Making of AmendsIn Andrew I. Cohen & Kathryn McClymond (eds.), Moral Injury and the Humanities: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Routledge. 2024.The clinical literature on moral injury sometimes mentions the making of amends as part of a possible treatment plan. However, it is typically unclear how clinicians are conceiving of the making of amends or “atonement,” particularly in the context of the debilitating cluster of symptoms known as moral injury. This chapter reviews some culturally prominent conceptions of atonement. It then raises a number of objections to these and recommends an alternative model – a “reconciliation theory” of a…Read more
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The Ethical and Political Dimensions of Making Amends: A DialogueSouth Central Review 27 (3): 144-61. 2010.Our topic is the moral task of righting one’s wrongful actions and the extent to which this should be considered primarily as a task for the wrongdoer alone, an interaction between the wrongdoer and victim, or a more broadly communal act. In considering this question, we are asked to consider what it means for justice to be served with regard to both victim and wrongdoer.
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Christopher Kutz, Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age (review)Philosophy in Review 22 43-45. 2002.
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The Role of the Public in Public ApologyIn Melissa Schwartzenberg & Eric Beerbohm (eds.), NOMOS LXV: Reconciliation and Repair, Nyu Press. pp. 203-22. 2023.This chapter reflects on public apologies as means of moral repair by considering the various roles the public might play in these moral dramas. Audiences to public apologies include people who are related to the transgression in different ways. This chapter focuses on those parties in front of whom public apologies are intentionally performed but who are neither victims nor wrongdoers. Do such third parties add something of value to the apology? If so, how? How might they play their role well? …Read more
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