Matthew Henry Kramer

During the past few decades, Michael Moore has written incisively on an array of matters concerning the relationships between law and morality. While reflecting on those relationships, he has plumbed the nature of morality itself in impressive depth. Among the topics which he has addressed, the problem of torture has been prominent and controversial. It is a problem, moreover, that has led to some of his most searching enquiries into the character of moral obligations. In the present essay I take issue not only with many of Moore's conclusions about torture, but also with some of his more far‐reaching claims about the domain of morality

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.