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1The Big Bad Wolf: Legal Positivism and Its DetractorsAmerican Journal of Jurisprudence 48 1-10. 2003.
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35Critical Legal Theory and the Challenge of Feminism: A Philosophical ReconceptionRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1994.Critical Legal Theory and the Challenge of Feminism provides both a thorough overview and a refinement of the ideas that underlie critical legal theory. Arguing with the rigor of analytic philosophy and the alertness to paradoxes characteristic of deconstructive philosophy, Matthew Kramer begins by exploring the tangled relations between metaphysics and politics. He then attempts to transform the discourses of the critical legal studies movement by laying out a framework of five general themes: …Read more
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31Hobbes and the Paradoxes of Political Origins.John Locke and the Origins of Private Property: Philosophical Explorations of Individualism, Community, and EqualityPhilosophical Review 108 (1): 146. 1999.Each of these two volumes grew out of what was originially intended to be a single chapter in a larger study of seventeenth-century liberalism. Although there is a strong degree of stylistic and methodological continuity between the two, neither book presupposes any familiarity with the other. I will therefore consider them separately.
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90Legal and moral obligationIn Martin P. Golding & William A. Edmundson (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory, Blackwell. pp. 179--190. 2004.This chapter contains section titled: The Obligation‐to‐Obey‐the‐Law What the Law Claims Matters of Form References Further Reading.
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117Working on the inside: Ronald Dworkin's moral philosophy (review)Analysis 73 (1): 118-129. 2013.
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59How moral principles can enter into the lawLegal Theory 6 (1): 83-108. 2000.In recent times, especially in the pages of this journal, the debate between the proponents of the two principal species of legal positivism has gained new vigor. Specifically, some champions of Exclusive Legal Positivism have sophisticatedly challenged the Inclusive Legal Positivists’ claim that moral principles can figure among the criteria by which the officials of a legal system ascertain the law. The present essay attempts to parry the most formidable of those recent challenges. 1
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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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16Dogmas and Distortions: Legal Positivism DefendedOxford Journal of Legal Studies 21 (4): 673-701. 2001.In a recent full‐length review of Matthew Kramer's In Defense of Legal Positivism, David Dyzenhaus has attacked legal positivists' accounts of adjudication and their views of the relationship between law and morality. The present essay defends legal positivism against his strictures, by arguing that he has misunderstood specific texts and the general lines of enquiry which the positivists pursue
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56A debate over rights: philosophical enquiriesClarendon Press. 1998.This collection of essays forms a lively debate over the fundamental characteristics of legal and moral rights. The essays examine whether rights fundamentally protect individuals' interests or whether they instead fundamentally enable individuals to make choices.
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2On the Separability of Law and MoralityCanadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 17 (2): 315-335. 2004.If there is one doctrine distinctively associated with legal positivism, it is the separability of law and morality. Both in opposition to classical natural-law thinkers and in response to more recent theorists such as Ronald Dworkin and Lon Fuller, positivists have endeavored to impugn any number of ostensibly necessary connections between the legal domain and the moral domain. Such is the prevailing view of legal positivism among people familiar with jurisprudence. During the past couple of de…Read more
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145Moral Rights and the Limits of the Ought‐Implies‐Can Principle: Why Impeccable Precautions are No ExcuseInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 48 (4). 2005.This essay argues against the commonly held view that "ought" implies "can" in the domain of morality. More specifically, I contest the notion that nobody should ever be held morally responsible for failing to avoid the infliction of any harm that he or she has not been able to avoid through all reasonably feasible precautions in the carrying out of some worthwhile activity. The article explicates the concept of a moral right in order to show why violations of moral rights can occur even when no…Read more