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99Theories of Rights: Is There a Third Way?Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 27 (2): 281-310. 2005.Some important recent articles, including one in this journal, have sought to devise theories of rights that can transcend the longstanding debate between the Interest Theory and the Will Theory. The present essay argues that those efforts fail and that the Interest Theory and the Will Theory withstand the criticisms that have been levelled against them. To be sure, the criticisms have been valuable in that they have prompted the amplification and clarification of the two dominant theories of ri…Read more
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4Le Règne Social du ChristianismeIn Peter Vallentyne & Hillel Steiner (eds.), The Origins of Left Libertarianism: An Anthology of Historical Writings, Palgrave Publishing. 2000.François Huet (1814-1869), a French philosopher, sought to reconcile the principles of Christianity with those of socialism. He argues that each person is entitled to the wealth he/she produces and to an equal share of the wealth from natural resources and from artifacts inherited from previous generations. Unlike Colins, Huet holds that agents have the right to give and bequeath wealth that they have created, but no such right with respect to wealth they inherited or received as a gift. (This v…Read more
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18The right to trade in human body partsCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 5 (4): 187-193. 2002.
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83Sharing Mother Nature's Gifts: A Reply to Quong and MillerJournal of Political Philosophy 19 (1): 110-123. 2011.
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48Double-counting inequalitiesPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 2 (1): 129-134. 2003.Philippe Van Parijs has argued that, in a globalizing economy, acquiring a second language, additional to one's native language, is more necessary for some persons than others and that this asymmetric bilingualism is a form of injustice which should be rectified by a more equitable global sharing of the costs of second-language acquisition. This article responds by suggesting that (1) since native languages have geographic locations, and (2) since locations with less globally useful native lan…Read more
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Of Intergenerational JusticeIn Gosseries Axel & Meyers L. (eds.), Intergenerational Justice, Oxford University Press. pp. 50. 2009.
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2Are there still any natural rights?In Matthew H. Kramer (ed.), The Legacy of H.L.A. Hart: Legal, Political, and Moral Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2008.
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19III*—Individual LibertyProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 75 (1): 33-50. 1975.Hillel Steiner; III*—Individual Liberty, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 75, Issue 1, 1 June 1975, Pages 33–50, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristote.
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96The Global Fund: A Reply to CasalJournal of Moral Philosophy 8 (3): 328-334. 2011.The Global Fund is a mechanism for the global application of the Left Libertarian conception of distributive justice. As a form of luck egalitarianism, this conception confers upon each person an entitlement to an equal share of all natural resource values, since natural resources - broadly, geographical sites - are objects for the production of which no person is responsible. Owners of these sites, i.e. states, are liable to a 100% Global Fund tax on their unimproved value: that is, their gross…Read more
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84Territorial justice and global redistributionIn Gillian Brock & Harry Brighouse (eds.), The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism, Cambridge University Press. pp. 28--38. 2005.
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3Freedom, Rights and Equality: A Reply to WolffInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 6 (1): 128-137. 1998.
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ResponsesIn Stephen De Wijze, Matthew H. Kramer & Ian Carter (eds.), Hillel Steiner and the Anatomy of Justice: Themes and Challenges, Routledge. 2009.
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86Capitalism, Justice and Equal StartsSocial Philosophy and Policy 5 (1): 49. 1987.“Does the existence of unequal social and economic starting points in life nullify capitalism's claims to justice?” Notice is hereby given that this essay's answer to this question is an unequivocal “maybe.” For it is a banal but true claim that everything depends upon what is meant by capitalism, justice and life's starting point. And it is a less banal but no less true claim that their meanings are opaque or controversial or both. In what follows I shall devote little attention to the question…Read more
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837An essay on rightsBlackwell. 1994.This book addresses the perennial question: What is justice?
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52Liberalism and NationalismAnalyse & Kritik 17 (1): 12-20. 1995.Historically, liberal political philosophy has had much to say about who is entitled to nationhood. But it has had rather less to say about how to determine the legitimate territorial boundaries of nations and even less to say about what some such nations, so situated, might owe to others. The object of this paper is to show that the foundational principles of liberalism can generate reasonably determinate solutions to these problems. That is, the very same set of basic rights that liberalism as…Read more
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774Libertarian Theories of Intergenerational JusticeIn Axel Gosseries & Lukas Meyer (eds.), Justice Between Generations, Oxford University Press. 2009.Justice and Libertarianism The term ‘justice’ is commonly used in several different ways. Sometimes it designates the moral permissibility of political structures (such as legal systems). Sometimes it designates moral fairness (as opposed to efficiency or other considerations that are relevant to moral permissibility). Sometimes it designates legitimacy in the sense of it being morally impermissible for others to interfere forcibly with the act or omission (e.g., my failing to go to dinner with …Read more
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38How Free: Computing Personal LibertyRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 15 73-89. 1983.Judgments about the extent to which an individual is free are easily among the more intractable of the various raw materials which present themselves for philosophical processing. On the one hand, few of us have any qualms about making statements to the effect that Blue is more free than Red. Explicitly or otherwise, such claims are the commonplaces of most history textbooks and of much that passes before us in the news media. And yet, good evidence for the presence of a philosophical puzzle her…Read more
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64The right to trade in human body partsIn Jonathan Seglow (ed.), Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, F. Cass Publishers. pp. 187-193. 2002.This essay challenges the coherence of arguments brought in support of prohibiting the sale of human body parts. Considerations of neither social utility nor individual rights nor avoidance of exploitation seem sufficient to ground such a prohibition. Indeed, they may be sufficient to invalidate it
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80Silver spoons and golden genes: Talent differentials and distributive justiceIn David Archard & Colin M. Macleod (eds.), The Moral and Political Status of Children, Oxford University Press. pp. 183--194. 2002.There is an important distinction between a person's ’initial genetic endowment’ and his ’post‐conception inputs’ such as nutrition and education. From a left‐libertarian perspective that views persons as self‐owning, children have an enforceable claim that parents should provide adequate ’post‐conception’ inputs. Moreover, with the revolution in genetic science, it is now possible to effect genetic changes without altering identity. If so, children can, in principle, claim a right against ’gene…Read more
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108Debate: Universal self-ownership and the fruits of one's labour: A reply to curchinJournal of Political Philosophy 16 (3): 350-355. 2008.No Abstract
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89Liberalism, neutrality and exploitationPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 12 (4): 335-344. 2013.This essay argues that a liberalism that avoids legal moralism – that is neutral between rival conceptions of the good – cannot embrace intervention in commercial transactions, but is thereby precluded neither from identifying some such transactions as exploitative nor from redressing them by other means
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35Persons of Lesser Value Moral Argument and the 'Final Solution'Journal of Applied Philosophy 12 (2): 129-141. 1995.For many persons, ‘Holocaust‐abomination’is a fixed point on their moral compass: if anything can be evil, it was. Yet at least one of the justifications deployed by its perpetrators (the eugenics argument) invokes widely‐held values concerning human health and procreation. Hence persons endorsing many current activities based on those values (e.g. genetic counselling) have been charged with being on a morally deplorable slippery slope. This paper sketches the necessary structure of a moral posi…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Law |
Social and Political Philosophy |