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61Book ReviewsFox-Decent, Evan. Sovereignty’s Promise: The State as Fiduciary.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. 283. $99.00 (review)Ethics 123 (1): 150-154. 2012.Review of Evan Fox-Decent, _Sovereignty's Promise: The State as Fiduciary_
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94The Place of Persecution and Non-State Action in Refugee ProtectionIn Alex Sager (ed.), The Ethics and Politics of Immigration: Core Issues and Emerging Trends, Rowman & Littlefield International. pp. 45-60. 2016.Crises of forced migration are, unfortunately, nothing new. At the time of the writing of this paper, at least two such crises were in full swing – mass movements from the Middle East and parts of Africa to the E.U., and major movements from Central America to the Southern U.S. border, including movements by large numbers of families and unaccompanied minors. These movements are complex, with multiple causes, and it is always risky to attempt to craft either general policy or philosophical posit…Read more
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340Who are Refugees?Law and Philosophy 32 (5): 645-671. 2013.Hundreds of millions of people around the world are unable to meet their needs on their own, and do not receive adequate protection or support from their home states. These people, if they are to be provided for, need assistance from the international community. If we are to meet our duties to these people, we must have ways of knowing who should be eligible for different forms of relief. One prominent proposal from scholars and activists has been to classify all who are unable to meet their bas…Read more
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76Justice and Temporary Labor MigrationGeorgetown Immigration Law Review 29 95. 2014.Temporary labor migration programs have been among the most controversial topics in discussions of immigration reform. They have been opposed by many, perhaps most, academics writing on immigration, by immigration reform activists, and by organized labor. This opposition has not been without some good reasons, as many historical temporary labor migration programs have led to significant injustice and abuse. However, in this paper I argue that a well-crafted temporary labor migration program is b…Read more
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79Guest Editor’s Introduction to Symposium on Allen Buchanan, The Heart of Human RightsLaw and Philosophy 36 (2): 115-120. 2017.For many years now Allen Buchanan has been one of the most important theorists working on the philosophy of human rights, producing a large number of papers and two books significantly devoted to the topic. In the work under consideration in this symposium, Buchanan breaks new ground by examining what he claims to be the “heart” of international human rights practice – the international legal human rights (“ILHR”) system, subjecting it to moral and philosophical analysis and criticism. Buchana…Read more
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82Review of Sovereignty’s Promise: The State as Fiduciary by Evan Fox-Decent (review)Ethics 123 (1): 150-4. 2012.In Sovereignty’s Promise: The State as Fiduciary, Evan Fox-Decent uses the idea of fiduciary relationships to explain the legitimate exercise of governmental authority. He makes use of the idea of the state as a fiduciary for the people to ground an account of the duty to obey the law, to explain the proper relationships between colonial (or “settler”) societies and aboriginal populations, the role of agency discretion and judicial review in the administrative state, the rule of law, the relati…Read more
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344Climate Change RefugeesCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 17 (5): 618-634. 2014.Under the UNHCR definition of a refugee, set out in the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, people fleeing their homes because of natural disasters or other environmental problems do not qualify for refugee status and the protection that come from such status. In a recent paper, "Who Are Refugees?", I defended the essentials of the UNHCR definition on the grounds that refugee status and protection is best reserved for people who can only be helped by granting them refuge in a safe …Read more
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39Well-ordered ScienceJournal of Philosophical Research 32 (9999): 127-139. 2007.The debate over the use of genetically-modified (GM) crops is one where the heat to light ratio is often quite low. Both proponents and opponents of GM crops often resort more to rhetoric than argument. This paper attempts to use Philip Kitcher’s idea of a “well-ordered science” to bring coherence to the debate. While I cannot, of course, here decide when and where, if at all, GM crops should be used I do show how Kitcher’s approach provides a useful framework in which to evaluate the desirabili…Read more
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51Citizenship, in the Immigration ContextUniversity of Maryland Law Review 70 175. 2010.Many international law scholars have begun to argue that the modern world is experiencing a "decline of citizenship," and that citizenship is no longer an important normative category. On the contrary, this paper argues that citizenship remains an important category and, consequently, one that implicates considerations of justice. I articulate and defend a "civic" notion of citizenship, one based explicitly on political values rather than shared demographic features like nationality, race, or cu…Read more
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83The Use and Abuse of Presumptions: Some comments on Dempsey on FinnisVillanova Law Review 57 485. 2012.This paper is a short commentary on Michelle Dempsey's contribution to a symposium on the work of John Finnis which took place at Villanova Law School in the fall of 2011. It focuses on Finnis's claim that there is a presumptive obligation to obey the law and some worries that Dempsey raises against this claim. It is forthcoming, along with several other papers from the symposium, in the Villanova Law Review
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214Review of Carl Knight, Luck Egalitarianism (review)Journal of Moral Philosophy 9 (1): 127-30. 2012.This is a review of Carl Knight's recent book, _Luck Egalitarianism_
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123John Corvino and Maggie Gallagher: Debating Same-Sex Marriage: Oxford University Press, 2012, 281 pp, $16.95 , ISBN: 9780199756315Criminal Law and Philosophy 9 (4): 727-735. 2015.This is a review of the book by John Corvino and Maggie Gallagher, _Debating Same-Sex Marriage_.
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91Empirical Desert, Individual Prevention, and Limiting Retributivism: A ReplyNew Criminal Law Review 17 (2): 312-375. 2014.A number of articles and empirical studies over the past decade, most by Paul Robinson and co-authors, have suggested a relationship between the extent of the criminal law's reputation for being just in its distribution of criminal liability and punishment in the eyes of the community – its "moral credibility" – and its ability to gain that community's deference and compliance through a variety of mechanisms that enhance its crime-control effectiveness. This has led to proposals to have criminal…Read more
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115There is no Human Right to Democracy. But May We Promote it Anyway?Stanford Journal of International Law 48 (2): 257. 2012.The idea of “promoting democracy” is one that goes in and out of favor. With the advent of the so-called “Arab Spring”, the idea of promoting democracy abroad has come up for discussion once again. Yet an important recent line of thinking about human rights, starting with John Rawls’s book The Law of Peoples, has held that there is no human right to democracy, and that nondemocratic states that respect human rights should be “beyond reproach” in the realm of international relations. This is, for…Read more
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27Criminal law conversations: "Desert: Empirical, not metaphysical" and "contractualism and the sharing of wrongs"In Paul Robinson, Kimberly Ferzan & Stephen Garvey (eds.), Criminal Law Conversations, Oxford University Press, Usa. 2009.Following are two short contributions to the book, _Criminal Law Conversations_: commentaries on Paul Robinson's discussion of "Empirical Desert" and Antony Duff & Sandra Marshal's discussion of the sharing of wrongs
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48Gang-related asylum claims: An overview and prescriptionUniversity of Memphis Law Review 38 (4). 2008.Over the last several years asylum cases relating to activities of criminal gangs have greatly increased in frequency. Cases involving Central American gangs, the so-called maras, have attracted the most attention but similar cases have arisen out of South Eastern and Eastern Europe as well. Applicants in such cases face a number of difficulties as their cases do not fit into paradigm categories for asylum claims. These cases almost always involve non-state actors, for example, acting for reason…Read more