Matthew Henry Kramer

A number of philosophers in recent years have maintained that H. L. A. Hart inThe Concept of Lawpropounded an expressivist account of the semantics of the legal statements that are uttered from the internal viewpoint of the people who run the institutions of legal governance in any jurisdiction. Although the primary aim of this article is to attack the attribution of that semantic doctrine to Hart, the article will begin with some metaphysical matters—the matters of reductionism and naturalism—that often lie behind the development of expressivist approaches to the semantics of normative discourse. After briefly exploring those metaphysical concerns (to which I will return later), the article will begin its main discussion by rehearsing the distinction between the semantics and the pragmatics of utterances. It will then delineate the doctrine of expressivism which the aforementioned philosophers have in mind when they ascribe that doctrine to Hart. Although I will make reference to a few such philosophers, I will focus chiefly on an article by Kevin Toh that has been the fountainhead of all the subsequent attributions of expressivism to Hart. As will be argued herein, Toh and like‐minded philosophers have gone astray in imputing to Hart a semantic version of expressivism. Notwithstanding that Hart’s theory of law can aptly be characterized as expressivist, that characterization is appropriate only when expressivism is understood as an account of the pragmatics of legal statements rather than as an account of their semantics.

In my recent book Liberalism with Excellence, I have expounded at length a conception of warranted self-respect. That conception, which draws heavily though far from uncritically on the scattered passages about self-respect in the writings of John Rawls, is central to my defense of a variety of liberalism that combines and transfigures certain aspects of Rawlsianism and perfectionism. However, it is also central to the positions taken in some earlier books of mine on capital punishment and torture. Although my understanding of warranted self-respect was presented far more briefly or obliquely in each of those earlier books than in Liberalism with Excellence, it in fact underlies both my limited defense of the death penalty and my absolutist insistence that the use of interrogational torture is never morally permissible. The present paper will recount the gist of my conception of warranted self-respect and will then explain how that conception figures pivotally in my ruminations on the diverse matters of political morality that have been mentioned here.

During the past several decades, political philosophers have frequently clashed with one another over the question whether governments are morally required to remain neutral among reasonable conceptions of excellence and human flourishing. Whereas the numerous followers of John Rawls have maintained that a requirement of neutrality is indeed incumbent on every system of governance, other philosophers -- often designated as 'perfectionists' -- have argued against the existence of such a requirement. Liberalism with Excellence enters these debates not by plighting itself unequivocally to one side or the other, but instead by reconceiving each of the sides and thus by redirecting the debates that have occurred between them. On the one hand, the book rejects the requirement of neutrality by contending that certain subsidies for the promotion of excellence in sundry areas of human endeavour can be proper and vital uses of resources by governments. Advocating such departures from the constraint of neutrality, the book presents a version of liberalism that can rightly be classified as 'perfectionist'. On the other hand, the species of perfectionism espoused in Liberalism with Excellence diverges markedly from the theories that have usually been so classified. Indeed, much of the book assails various aspects of those theories. What is more, the aspirational perfectionism elaborated in the closing chapters of the volume is reconcilable in most key respects with a suitably amplified version of Rawlsianism. Hence, by reconceiving both the perfectionist side and the neutralist side of the prevailing disputation, Liberalism with Excellence combines and transforms their respective insights.

RÉSUMÉ: Les philosophes, au cours des cinquante dernières années, se sont efforcés de démontrer qu’un professeur peut, d’une manière cohérente et exacte, annoncer à ses étudiants qu’un examen surprise aura lieu lors d’une journée non spécifiée d’une période donnée, le problème étant qu’une telle annonce peut sembler s’annuler ellemême lorsqu’elle est soumise à une induction régressive. Deux grandes approches, l’une épistémique et l’autre logique, one été développées à ce propos. Le présent article adopte une approche logique, mais repose aussi d’une manière cruciale sur une compréhension épistémique du problème, pour essayer de montrer que l’annonce du professeur peut effectivement être cohérente et exacte.

During the past few decades, Quentin Skinner has been one of the most prominent critics of the ideas about negative liberty that have developed out of the writings of Isaiah Berlin. Among Skinner's principal charges against the contemporary doctrine of negative liberty is the claim that the proponents of that doctrine have overlooked the putative fact that people can be made unfree to refrain from undertaking particular actions. In connection with this matter, Skinner contrasts the present-day theories with the prototypical liberal account of negative freedom propounded by Thomas Hobbes. The present essay challenges Skinner's position both philosophically and exegetically. Because an agent can always elect to cease his activity as an agent, the ostensible inescapability of certain actions is not the same as the outright inescapability of certain instances of inaction. Once this point is properly recognized, the way is clear for a re-evaluation of Hobbes (and of Skinner on Hobbes).

All or virtually all moral philosophers agree that moral properties supervene on natural properties; that is, two actions or situations cannot differ in their moral properties unless there are differences in their natural properties that account for the moral difference between them. Virtually all moral philosophers also believe that supervenience is a conceptual or logical feature of moral discourse and judgments. While accepting that supervenience is a fundamental feature of morality, this essay contends that it is a basic substantive moral constraint rather than a purely conceptual or logical feature

In an array of writings stretching over the better part of two decades, Quentin Skinner has repeatedly challenged the modern conception of negative liberty developed by Isaiah Berlin and many other theorists. He has sought to draw attention to some once vibrant but now largely peripheral traditions of thought—especially the civic‐republican or neo‐Roman tradition—in order to highlight what he sees as the limitedness and inadequacies of the currently dominant ways of thinking about freedom. The present essay will endeavor to defend one important aspect of the modern understanding of negative liberty against Skinner's strictures, and will challenge Skinner's reading of Thomas Hobbes.

Inclusive Legal Positivism, as understood throughout this article, consists in the following thesis: It can be the case, though it need not be the case, that a norm’s consistency with some or all of the requirements of morality is a precondition for the norm’s status as a law in this or that jurisdiction. While such a precondition for legal validity is not inherent in the concept of law, it can be imposed as a threshold test under the Rule of Recognition in any particular legal regime. That test, which can be applied by the officials in such a regime to all of the legal norms therein or to only some subset of those norms, is one of the criteria that the officials use for ascertaining the law. Insofar as a criterion of that sort does prevail in any particular legal system, then, some degree of moral worthiness is a necessary condition for the legally authoritative force of each norm that is validated thereunder. Inclusive Legal Positivism, which readily accepts the possibility of such a state of affairs, is inclusive because it allows that moral precepts can figure among the criteria that guide officials’ ascertainment of the law. Inclusivist theorists reject the view that every criterion of law-ascertainment in every possible legal system is focused on nonnormative matters of provenance. At the same time, the Inclusivists are positivists because they also reject the view that every possible legal system includes moral tests among its law-ascertaining criteria. An Inclusive Legal Positivist insists that such tests are contingent features, rather than essential features, of the systems of law wherein they are applied.

In Legality Scott Shapiro seeks to provide the motivation for the development of his own elaborate account of law by undertaking a critique of H.L.A. Hart's jurisprudential theory. Hart maintained that every legal system is underlain by a rule of recognition through which officials of the system identify the norms that belong to the system as laws. Shapiro argues that Hart's remarks on the rule of recognition are confused and that his model of lawis consequently untenable. Shapiro contends that a new approach is vital for progress in the philosophy of law and, with his lengthy presentation of his own Planning Theory of Law, he aspires to pioneer just such an approach. Except for a very terse observation in the final main section, this article does not directly assess the strengths and shortcomings of Shapiro's piquant planning theory. Instead, I defend Hart against Shapiro's charges and thereby undermine the motivation for the development of the planning theory

John Locke's labor theory of property is one of the seminal ideas of political philosophy and served to establish its author's reputation as one of the leading social and political thinkers of all time. Through it Locke addressed many of his most pressing concerns, and earned a reputation as an outstanding spokesman for political individualism - a reputation that lingers widely despite some partial challenges that have been raised in recent years. In this major new study Matthew Kramer offers an extensive critique of the labor theory and investigates the consequences of its downfall. With incisive analyses of the merits and failings of many aspects of Locke's political thought, Kramer advances a powerful challenge to Locke's image as an individualist. Employing a rigorously philosophical methodology, but remaining aware of the insights generated by historical approaches to Locke, Kramer concludes that Locke's political vision was in fact profoundly communitarian.

This essay maintains that the question in its title is really three sets of questions: a conceptual inquiry, a moral/political inquiry, and an empirical inquiry. After devoting some attention to the relevant conceptual issues, the essay ponders in detail the moral/political issues. It suggests some answers to the germane moral/political questions, and it takes pains to distinguish those questions from other lines of inquiry with which they might be confused. Although only animals and dead people are mentioned in the title, the essay also considers whether infants, comatose people, lunatics, future generations, groups, trees, and natural phenomena such as rivers should be classified as potential holders of legal rights

Lon Fuller is best known among legal philosophers for his efforts to highlight the intrinsically moral nature of law. To show that his efforts come to nought, the present essay ponders not only the ideas advanced by Fuller himself, but also some of the defences of him that have been mounted in recent years. Those defences centre on his notion of reciprocity, according to which the officials in a genuine legal system have effectively undertaken to respect die confines of the mandates which they ask citizens (including themselves) to obey. Building on that notion, the supporters of Fuller have affirmed that the basic characteristics of law are intrinsically promotive of values such as autonomy and due process. As the present essay seeks to demonstrate, their sophisticated lines of argument turn out to be unavailing

Throughout the English-speaking world, and in the many other countries where analytic philosophy is studied, Hillel Steiner is esteemed as one of the foremost contemporary political philosophers. This volume is designed as a festschrift for Steiner and as an important collection of philosophical essays in its own right. The editors have assembled a roster of highly distinguished international contributors, all of whom are eager to pay tribute to Steiner by focusing on topics on which he himself has concentrated. Some of the contributors engage directly with Steiner's work, whereas others focus not directly on his writings but instead grapple with issues that have figured prominently therein. Each essay seeks to advance the debates in which Steiner himself has so notably participated. The study concludes with a response by Steiner himself.

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 decades, however, that prevailing view has come into question among some estimable legal positivists. In particular, Joseph Raz and his followers have queried the importance and the very tenability of an insistence on the separability of law and morality. The present article maintains that the traditional view of legal positivism is correct and that the recent skepticism about it on the part of some positivists is unfounded. When the notion of the disjoinability of law and morality is understood properly as a large array of theses, it proves to be resistant to the challenges that have been mounted against it