Jules Coleman

In this essay, I characterize the original intervention that became Inclusive Legal Positivism, defend it against a range of powerful objections, explain its contribution to jurisprudence, and display its limitations and its modest jurisprudential significance. I also show how in its original formulations ILP depends on three notions that are either mistaken or inessential to law: the separability thesis, the rule of recognition, and the idea of criteria of legality. The first is false and is in event inessential to legal positivism. The second is inessential to legal positivism. The third is likely inessential to law. I then characterize the central claim of ILP in a way that relies on none of these: ILP is the claim that necessarily social facts determine the determinants of legal content. I show that ILP so conceived leaves the central debates in law largely untouched. I suggest how the most fundamental of these—the question of the normativity of law—at least can be usefully addressed. The essay closes by suggesting that even though one can distinguish the social from the normative dimensions of law, a theory of the nature of law is necessarily an account of the relationship between the two: It is a theory either of the difference that certain distinctive social facts make in normative space, or it is an account of the distinctive normative difference that law makes, and the social and other facts that are necessary to explain that difference. One can distinguish between but one cannot separate the social from the normative aspects of legality.

This collection of essays by one of America's leading legal theorists is unique in its scope: It shows how traditional problems of philosophy can be understood more clearly when considered in terms of law, economics and political science. There are four sections in the book. The first offers a new version of legal positivism and an original theory of legal rights. The second section critically evaluates the economic approach to law, and the third considers the relationship of justice to liability for unintentional harms and to the practice of settling disputes rather than fully litigating them. Finally, Coleman explores formal social choice in democratic theory, the relationship between market behaviour and voting, and the view that morality itself, like law, is a solution of the problem of market failure. This book will be of cardinal importance to philosophers of law, legal theorists, political scientists and economists.

Gregory S. Kavka was a prominent and influential figure in contemporary moral and political philosophy. The essays in this volume are concerned with fundamental issues of rational commitment and social justice to which Kavka devoted his work as a philosopher. The essays take Kavka's work as a point of departure and seek to advance the respective debates. The topics include: the relationship between intention and moral action as part of which Kavka's famous 'toxin puzzle' is a focus of discussion, the nature of deterrence, the rationality of morals, contractarian ethics, and the contemporary relevance of Hobbes' political thought. Incorporating important philosophical statements of problems and fresh contributions to the ongoing debate about rational intention this volume will interest not just philosophers but also political scientists and economists.

We explore the relationship between jurisprudential theories pertaining to the nature of law and semantic and metasemantic theories pertaining to the meaning of ‘law’ in the wake of Dworkin’s notorious Semantic Sting argument in Law’s Empire (HUP 1986). Along the way we delineate various aspects of the semantic and metasemantic underpinnings of ‘law’ as an artifact term and advance the general methodological point that jurisprudential inquiry is only negligibly constrained by the findings of semantic and metasemantic inquiry.

In this essay, I characterize the original intervention that became Inclusive Legal Positivism, defend it against a range of powerful objections, explain its contribution to jurisprudence, and display its limitations and its modest jurisprudential significance. I also show how in its original formulations ILP depends on three notions that are either mistaken or inessential to law: the separability thesis, the rule of recognition, and the idea of criteria of legality. The first is false and is in event inessential to legal positivism. The second is inessential to legal positivism. The third is likely inessential to law. I then characterize the central claim of ILP in a way that relies on none of these: ILP is the claim that necessarily social facts determine the determinants of legal content. I show that ILP so conceived leaves the central debates in law largely untouched. I suggest how the most fundamental of these—the question of the normativity of law—at least can be usefully addressed. The essay closes by suggesting that even though one can distinguish the social from the normative dimensions of law, a theory of the nature of law is necessarily an account of the relationship between the two: It is a theory either of the difference that certain distinctive social facts make in normative space, or it is an account of the distinctive normative difference that law makes, and the social and other facts that are necessary to explain that difference. One can distinguish between but one cannot separate the social from the normative aspects of legality.

An extraordinary collection of the finest essays in the core areas of legal philosophy, _Readings in Philosophy of_ _Law_ is a perfect introduction to the breadth of issues covered in the philosophy of law. The essays are all classic papers chosen as much for their clarity of thought and comprehensiveness as for their distinctiveness and importance to the subject matters of legal philosophy. This collection is ideal for the professional as well as the student, as it brings together classic essays that are not otherwise available in one volume. The reader sees each author's thoughts and arguments unfold naturally within the context of other important works. For breadth of contributions and intellectual rigor, _Readings in Philosophy of Law_ is unrivalled.

US Senate is considering legislation designed to immunize small businesses from lawsuits brought by customers alleging to have been infected with COVID-19 while on the premises. The legislation seeks to subsidize reopening small businesses by reducing their vulnerability to liability. I argue that the legislation produces worse public health outcomes than existing liability regimes, obliterates claims to redress supported by corrective justice, and unfairly burdens victims by forcing them to become de facto insurers of their injurers. In the US, where health insurance is inextricably linked with employment, and during the pandemic with the consequent loss of employment, the legislation is cruel in addition to being ineffective, unjust, unfair and inappropriate. Since I first uploaded this manuscript to Philpapers, Senate Republicans have in fact introduced specific legislation that is marginally different than the one I discuss in the manuscript. Instead of offering blanket immunity, the current Republican proposal offers a series of substantial barriers both to filing lawsuits and to securing a successful verdict at trial. I discuss these as an addendum to the main paper. In short, though the changes impact some features of my argument, they do not alter any of the conclusions. The current proposal produces worse public health outcomes than would existing tort regime; it leaves the vast majority of those with legitimate claims to repair in corrective justice without a remedy, when providing the opportunity to secure a remedy for wrongs is in large measure, the essential nature of tort liability. Worse still, it continues to render victims the de facto insurers of those who have wronged them; it imposes the burden of spreading risks on victims who are considerably less efficient risk spreaders than are businesses and hospitals; it constitutes an inappropriate response to the challenge it seeks to address, i.e. subsidizing various sectors of the economy by reducing their overall costs; and given the fact that in the US health insurance is too closely linked to employment, it shifts the costs of the pandemic to those who are most at risk of losing their health insurance, rendering the proposal cruel in addition to inefficient, unjust, unfair and inappropriate. For those interested, I am considering a short op-ed piece assessing the particular legislative proposal. If I follow through I will let the readership know where that can be found

Reactive emotion accounts hold that blameworthiness should be analyzed in terms of the familiar reactive emotions. However, despite the attractions of such views, we are not persuaded that blameworthiness is ultimately a matter of correctly felt reactive emotion. In this paper, we draw attention to a range of little-discussed considerations involving the moral significance of the passage of time that drive a wedge between blameworthiness and the reactive emotions: the appropriateness of the reactive emotions is sensitive to the passage of time in ways that attributions of blameworthiness are not. There are a number of ways in which reactive emotion accounts might attempt to accommodate the moral significance of time, however. We consider the most important of these, but ultimately find them wanting. Accordingly, we conclude that the prospects for the reactive emotion accounts are bleak. Our argument, if successful, has a range of implications for legal theory, most importantly in providing a novel moral basis for statutes of limitations and in shedding light on new avenues in the theory of criminal law generally.

INTRODUCTION In any society relatively few disputes are brought to judges for resolution. Most are handled informally or forgotten. Fewer still are cases that go to trial. Most are settled. Compromises are reached even in cases where issues are hotly contested and where millions or billions of dollars in damages are claimed. Recently, for example, one of the most controversial lawsuits of our time, the Agent Orange case, was settled. In that case, veterans of the Vietnam War, their spouses, and their children alleged that a defoliant — Agent Orange – used in Southeast Asia contained dioxin and was responsible for deaths, debilities, miscarriages, and birth defects suffered by members of the plaintiff class. Class members argued that the manufacturers of the defoliant, seven major chemical companies, knew that it was tainted and should be made to compensate them for their injuries, claiming billions of dollars in damages. The case received national exposure and became a rallying point for veterans, a means they hoped to use to publicize their plight and to spur Congress to come to their aid. On the eve of trial, the case was settled. The defendants, who denied liability throughout the pretrial period, agreed to pay the veterans $180 million. In turn, the plaintiff class agreed to drop the suit. Thus ended a controversy which not only presented novel legal issues and tested the ability of the federal courts to handle complex lawsuits, but concerned the well-being of a large number of veterans, their spouses, and their handicapped children as well