•  27
    On (the Burdens of) Securing Rights to Access Information
    Journal of Information Ethics 23 (1): 42-54. 2014.
    Some might argue that a right to access information is problematic, as it requires too much from others. Being a "positive right," the possession of which foists upon others a duty to provide something, an RAI might be thought to contrast with a "negative right," such as the right not to be harmed. Here, other people have duties only to refrain from performing certain actions. The critics this paper is concerned with continue that positive rights are problematic, where negative rights are not, s…Read more
  •  24
    Political ethics, a subfield of applied ethics, is concerned with normative questions about voters, politicians, lobbyists, and other individual political agents. Compared with other fields in applied ethics political ethics has not developed into an area of intense interest in academic philosophy. Debates over the main questions in political ethics occur in mainstream news, on social media, in living rooms and neighborhood bars, etc., but for the most part have not bled over into the pages of p…Read more
  •  18
    The influence of patents on science
    Politics, Philosophy and Economics 15 (4): 424-450. 2016.
    This paper is a critique of the current US patent system along general consequentialist lines. I present a pro tanto case against it because of its effects on scientific inquiry. The patent system is often thought to be justified because it provides incentives to innovate. I challenge this concern. Economists and legal scholars have spent a good portion of time analyzing particular aspects of the patent system. I here synthesize their work, showing how it amounts to a pro tanto moral case agains…Read more
  •  18
    Liberty and the American Patent System
    Southwest Philosophy Review 24 (1): 21-28. 2008.
  •  16
    Coercion, Interrogation, and Prisoners of War
    with Nathan Lake
    Journal of Military Ethics 21 (2): 151-161. 2022.
    The law of armed conflict prevents the coerced extraction of information from Prisoners of War (PoWs). We claim, however, that the letter of that law involves too broad a concept of coercion. On a natural reading, there is a sense in which any extraction of information—by any method—is coercive. We respect the notion that PoWs ought not be treated poorly, but we argue “coercion” should not be understood so broadly. With respect to its use in international law, we favor a moralized notion of “coe…Read more
  •  9
    Liberty and the Rejection of Strong Intellectual Property Rights
    In Gosseries Axel, Marciano A. & Strowel A. (eds.), Intellectual Property and Theories of Justice, Basingstoke & N.y.: Palgrave Mcmillan. pp. 122--140. 2008.
  •  7
    Political Ethics: Voters, Lobbyists, and Politicians (edited book)
    with Emily Crookston and David Killoren
    Routledge. 2016.
    Most research in political philosophy focuses on issues related to states and governments. Only rarely do political philosophers focus on the ethical actions of individuals—voters, lobbyists, politicians, party members—acting within large-scale political systems. _Political Ethics _works against the dominant paradigm, offering twenty-one, never before-published essays on the ethics of non-statist political agents. The chapters cover three major areas of political ethics: The Rights and Obligatio…Read more