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24The Duty to Obey the Law: Selected Philosophical Readings (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1998.The question 'Why should I obey the law?' introduces a contemporary puzzle that is as old as philosophy itself. The puzzle is especially troublesome if we think of cases in which breaking the law is not otherwise wrongful, and in which the chances of getting caught are negligible. Philosophers from Socrates to H.L.A. Hart have struggled to give reasoned support to the idea that we do have a general moral duty to obey the law but, more recently, the greater number of learned voices has expressed …Read more
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18The Nature of Limited GovernmentIn John Keown & Robert P. George (eds.), Reason, morality, and law: the philosophy of John Finnis, Oxford University Press. pp. 186. 2013.
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4Law and obligationsIn Jules L. Coleman & Scott Shapiro (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence & Philosophy of Law, Oxford University Press. pp. 514--547. 2002.
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Commentary : legal ethics—sociology and moralityIn Don MacNiven (ed.), Moral expertise: studies in practical and professional ethics, Routledge. pp. 101. 1990.
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43Review of George Klosko: The Principle of Fairness and Political Obligation (review)Ethics 104 (2): 392-394. 1994.
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11Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Law: Volume 2 (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2013.Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Law is an annual forum for new philosophical work on law. The essays range widely over general jurisprudence (the nature of law, adjudication, and legal reasoning), philosophical foundations of specific areas of law (from criminal to international law), and other philosophical topics relating to legal theory
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63The duty to governLegal Theory 13 (3-4): 165-185. 2007.Contemporary legal philosophers have focussed their attention on two aspects of the general theory of authority: the issue of legitimacy and the issue of obligation . In John Finnis's work we have a powerful statement of the importance of a third issue: the problem of governance . This paper explores the nature of this duty, its foundations, and its relation to the other aspects of a theory of authority
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62Rights of ExitLegal Theory 4 (2): 165-185. 1998.Social groups claim authority to impose restrictions on their members that the state cannot. Churches, ethnic groups, minority nations, universities, social clubs, and families all regulate belief and behavior in ways that would be obviously unjust in the context of a state and its citizens. All religions impose doctrinal requirements; many also enforce sexist practices and customs. Some universities impose stringent speech and conduct codes on their students and faculty. Parochial schools discr…Read more
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12The Jurisprudence of Orthodoxy: Queen's University Essays on H.L.A. HartPhilosophical Books 30 (4): 254-256. 1989.
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58Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Law: Volume 1 (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2011.The essays range widely over issues in general jurisprudence (the nature of law, adjudication, and legal reasoning), the philosophical foundations of specific ...
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37General Jurisprudence: A 25th Anniversary EssayOxford Journal of Legal Studies 25 (4): 565-580. 2005.
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197Should Law Improve Morality?Criminal Law and Philosophy 7 (3): 473-494. 2013.Lawyers and philosophers have long debated whether law should enforce social morality. This paper explores whether law should improve social morality. It explains how this might be possible, and what sort of obstacles, factual and moral, there are to doing so. It concludes with an example: our law should attempt to improve our social morality of sexual conduct
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Obscenity without bordersIn Francois Tanguay-Renaud & James Stribopoulos (eds.), Rethinking Criminal Law Theory: New Canadian Perspectives in the Philosophy of Domestic, Transnational, and International Criminal Law, Hart Publishing. 2012.
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129The Authority of the StateClarendon Press. 1988.The modern state claims supreme authority over the lives of all its citizens. Drawing together political philosophy, jurisprudence, and public choice theory, this book forces the reader to reconsider some basic assumptions about the authority of the state. Various popular and influential theories - conventionalism, contractarianism, and communitarianism - are assessed by the author and found to fail. Leslie Green argues that only the consent of the governed can justify the state's claims to auth…Read more
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21Kant's Liberalism: A Reply to Rolf GeorgeDialogue 27 (2): 207-. 1988.In his thoughtful paper, “The Liberal Tradition, Kant, and the Pox”, Rolf George joins the venerable argument about whether Kant should be accounted friend or foe of liberals. But this is not just a rehearsal of the debate over the compatibility of the Old Jacobin's defense of civil liberties and government by consent with his notoriously unpleasant doctrines of the absolute duty to obey the law or his ruthlessly retributive view of punishment. George advances the debate by suggesting that eleme…Read more
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53This article defends legal instrumentalism, i.e. the thesis that law is distinguished among social institutions more by the means by which it serves its ends, than by the ends it serves. In Kelsen's terms, '[L]aw is a means, a specific social means, not an end.' The defence is indirect. First, it is argued that the instrumentalist thesis is an interpretation of a broader view about law that is common ground among theorists as different as Aquinas and Bentham. Second, the following familiar falla…Read more
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45Associative obligations and the stateIn Justine Burley (ed.), Dworkin and His Critics: With Replies by Dworkin, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 265--284. 2004.
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56The standard syllabus of legal philosophyPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 18 (1): 107-111. 1988.
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17Review of William A. Galston, Liberal Pluralism: The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2002 (11). 2002.
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173Positivism And The Inseparability Of Law And MoralsNew York University Law Review 83 1035--1058. 2008.This is the penultimate draft of a paper originally presented at the Hart-Fuller at 50 conference, held at the NYU Law School in February 2008. A revised version will appear in the NYU Law Review. The paper seeks to clarify and assess HLA Hart's famous claim that legal positivism somehow involves a 'separation of law and morals.' The paper contends that Hart's 'separability thesis should not be confused with the 'social thesis,' with the 'sources thesis,' or with a methodological thesis about ju…Read more
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57On being toleratedIn Matthew H. Kramer, Claire Grant, Ben Colburn & Antony Hatzistavrou (eds.), The legacy of H.L.A. Hart: legal, political, and moral philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2008.Why is it that toleration can be uncomfortable for the tolerated? And how should tolerators respond to that discomfort? This paper argues that properly directed toleration can be deficient in its scope, grounds or spirit. That explains some of the discomfort in being tolerated. Beyond this, the occasions for toleration - the existence of a power to prevent and of an adverse judgment - can also make toleration sting. The paper then explores and rejects two familiar suggestions about how one shoul…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Law |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Law |
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Sexuality |