•  831
    Normative Principles and Practical Ethics: A Response to O’Neill
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 26 (3): 231-237. 2009.
    abstract This article briefly examines Onora O'Neill's account of the relation between normative principles and practical ethical problems with an eye to suggesting that philosophers of practical ethics have reason to adopt fairly high moral ambitions to be edifying and instructive both as educators and as advisors on public policy debates.
  •  544
    This article challenges the use of social deprivation as a punishment, and offers a preliminary examination of the human rights implications of exile and solitary confinement. The article considers whether a human right against coercive social deprivation is conceptually redundant, as there are recognised rights against torture, extremely cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment as well as rights to basic health care, education, and security, which might encompass what this right protects. The ar…Read more
  •  519
    Moral aspirations and ideals
    Utilitas 22 (3): 241-257. 2010.
    My aim is to vindicate two distinct and important moral categories – ideals and aspirations – which have received modest, and sometimes negative, attention in recent normative debates. An ideal is a conception of perfection or model of excellence around which we can shape our thoughts and actions. An aspiration, by contrast, is an attitudinal position of steadfast commitment to, striving for, or deep desire or longing for, an ideal. I locate these two concepts in relation to more familiar moral …Read more
  •  339
    Features of a paradigm case of civil disobedience
    Res Publica 10 (4): 337-351. 2004.
    The purpose of this paper is not to define civil disobedience, but to identify a paradigm case of civil disobedience and the features exemplified in it. After noting the benefits of this methodological approach, the paper proceeds with an examination of two key, interconnected features: conscientiousness and communication. First, a link is made between the conscientious aspect of civil disobedience and moral consistency; a civil disobedient demonstrates a conscientious commitment to certain valu…Read more
  •  199
    Oxford Legal Philosophy publishes the best new work in philosophically-oriented legal theory. It commissions and solicits monographs in all branches of the subject, including works on philosophical issues in all areas of public and private law, and in the national, transnational, and international realms; studies of the nature of law, legal institutions, and legal reasoning; treatments of problems in political morality as they bear on law; and explorations in the nature and development of legal …Read more
  •  153
    The communicative aspects of civil disobedience and lawful punishment
    Criminal Law and Philosophy 1 (2): 179-192. 2007.
    A parallel may be drawn between the communicative aspect of civil disobedience and the communicative aspect of lawful punishment by the state. In punishing an offender, the state seeks to communicate both its condemnation of the crime committed and its desire for repentance and reformation on the part of the offender. Similarly, in civilly disobeying the law, a disobedient seeks to convey both her condemnation of a certain law or policy and her desire for recognition that a lasting change in pol…Read more
  •  148
    A Human Right Against Social Deprivation
    Philosophical Quarterly 63 (251): 199-222. 2013.
    Human rights debates neglect social rights. This paper defends one fundamentally important, but largely unacknowledged social human right. The right is both a condition for and a constitutive part of a minimally decent human life. Indeed, protection of this right is necessary to secure many less controversial human rights. The right in question is the human right against social deprivation. In this context, ‘social deprivation’ refers not to poverty, but to genuine, interpersonal, social depriva…Read more
  •  121
    Reasons and ideals
    Philosophical Studies 151 (3): 433-444. 2010.
    This paper contributes to the debate on whether we can have reason to do what we are unable to do. I take as my starting point two papers recently published in Philosophical Studies , by Bart Streumer and Ulrike Heuer, which defend the two dominant opposing positions on this issue. Briefly, whereas Streumer argues that we cannot have reason to do what we are unable to do, Heuer argues that we can have reason to do what we are unable to do when we can get closer to success but cannot have reason …Read more
  •  118
  •  118
    Legal obligation as a duty of deference
    Law and Philosophy 27 (6). 2008.
    An enduring question in political and legal philosophy concerns whether we have a general moral obligation to follow the law. In this paper, I argue that Philip Soper’s intuitively appealing effort to give new life to the idea of legal obligation by characterising it as a duty of deference is ultimately unpersuasive. Soper claims that people who understand what a legal system is and admit that it is valuable must recognise that they would be morally inconsistent to deny that they owe deference t…Read more
  •  116
    Disability and Disadvantage (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2009.
    Introduction ADAM CURETON AND KIMBERLEY BROWNLEE Disability and disadvantage are interrelated topics that raise important and sometimes overlooked issues in ...
  •  110
    Ethical Dilemmas of Sociability
    Utilitas 28 (1): 54-72. 2016.
    There is a tension between our need for associative control and our need for social connections. This tension creates ethical dilemmas that we can call each-we dilemmas of sociability. To resolve these dilemmas, we must prioritize either negative moral rights to dissociate or positive moral rights to social inclusion. This article shows that we must prioritize positive social rights. This has implications both for personal morality and for political theory. As persons, we must attend to each oth…Read more
  •  106
    The civil disobedience of Edward Snowden: A reply to William Scheuerman
    Philosophy and Social Criticism 42 (10): 965-970. 2016.
    This article responds to William Scheuerman’s analysis of Edward Snowden as someone whose acts fit within John Rawls’ account of civil disobedience understood as a public, non-violent, conscientious breach of law performed with overall fidelity to law and a willingness to accept punishment. It rejects the narrow Rawlsian notion in favour of a broader notion of civil disobedience understood as a constrained, conscientious and communicative breach of law that demonstrates opposition to law or poli…Read more
  •  91
    What a Home Does
    with David Jenkins
    Law and Philosophy 41 (4): 441-468. 2022.
    Analytic philosophy has largely neglected the topic of homelessness. The few notable exceptions, including work by Jeremy Waldron and Christopher Essert, focus on our interests in shelter, housing, and property rights, but ignore the key social functions that a home performs as a place in which we are welcomed, accepted, and respected. This paper identifies a ladder of home-related concepts which begins with the minimal notion of temporary shelter, then moves to persistent shelter and housing, a…Read more
  •  82
    I- The Lonely Heart Breaks: On the Right to Be a Social Contributor
    Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 90 (1): 27-48. 2016.
    This paper uncovers a distinctively social type of injustice that lies in the kinds of wrongs we can do to each other specifically as social beings. In this paper, social injustice is not principally about unfair distributions of socio-economic goods among citizens. Instead, it is about the ways we can violate each other’s fundamental rights to lead socially integrated lives in close proximity and relationship with other people. This paper homes in on a particular type of social injustice, which…Read more
  •  80
    Justifying Punishment: A Response to Douglas Husak (review)
    Criminal Law and Philosophy 2 (2): 123-129. 2008.
    In ‘Why Criminal Law: A Question of Content?’, Douglas Husak argues that an analysis of the justifiability of the criminal law depends upon an analysis of the justifiability of state punishment. According to Husak, an adequate justification of state punishment both must show why the state is permitted to infringe valuable rights such as the right not to be punished and must respond to two distinct groups of persons who may demand a justification for the imposition of punishment, namely, individu…Read more
  •  70
    Responsibilities of criminal justice officials
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 27 (2): 123-139. 2010.
    In recent years, political philosophers have hotly debated whether ordinary citizens have a general pro tanto moral obligation to follow the law. Contemporary philosophers have had less to say about the same question when applied to public officials. In this paper, I consider the latter question in the morally complex context of criminal justice. I argue that criminal justice officials have no general pro tanto moral obligation to adhere to the legal dictates and lawful rules of their offices. M…Read more
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  •  55
    Retributive, Restorative and Ritualistic Justice
    Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 30 (2): 385-397. 2010.
    Few defences of retribution in criminal justice make a plausible case for the view that punishment plays a necessary role in restoring relations between offenders, victims and the community. Even fewer defences of retribution make a plausible appeal to the interpersonal practice of apologizing as a symbolically adequate model for criminal justice. This review article considers Christopher Bennett’s engaging defence of an apology ritual in criminal justice, an account of justifiable punishment th…Read more
  •  48
    Reply to Critics
    Criminal Law and Philosophy 10 (4): 721-739. 2016.
    This article responds to the four contributors to the book symposium on Conscience and Conviction: The Case for Civil Disobedience. Those four contributors are Thomas Hill Jr, David Lefkowitz, William Smith, and Daniel Weinstock. Hill examines the concepts of conviction and conscience ; Smith discusses conviction and then analyses the right to civil disobedience and my humanistic arguments for it ; Weinstock explores democratic challenges for civil disobedience ; and Lefkowitz assesses the merit…Read more
  •  48
    What’s virtuous about the law?
    Legal Theory 21 (1): 1-17. 2015.
    Debates about our moral relation to the law typically focus on the moral force of law. Often, the question asked is: Do we have a moral duty to follow the law? Recently, that question has been given a virtue-ethical formulation: Is there a virtue in abiding by the law? This paper considers our moral relation to the law in terms of virtue but focuses on a different question from the traditional ones. The question here is: Can the law model virtue in beneficial ways that enable us to cultivate vir…Read more
  •  45
    The Competent Judge Problem
    Ratio 29 (3): 312-326. 2015.
    We face an epistemic problem in competently judging some types of experience. The problem arises when an experience either defies our efforts to assess its quality, such as a traumatic event, or compromises our abilities to assess quality in general, such as starvation. In the latter type of case, the competent judge problem is actually a paradox since the experience undermines our competence to judge at the same time that it gives us competence to judge it against other experiences. The problem…Read more
  •  38
    Acting Defensively for the Sake of Our Attacker
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 16 (2): 105-130. 2019.
    Despite worries about paternalism, when we are unjustifiably attacked, we are morally warranted, and sometimes required, to act in self-defense for the sake of our attacker to prevent him from committing this morally defiling act. Similarly, when a third party is unjustifiably attacked and we can assist without undue cost, we are morally warranted, and sometimes required, to act in third-party defense for the sake of the attacker as well as the victim, to prevent the attacker from committing thi…Read more
  •  38
    Digging Up, Dismantling, and Redesigning the Criminal Law
    Criminal Law and Philosophy 7 (1): 169-178. 2013.
    The criminal law raises wonderfully thorny foundational questions. Some of these questions are conceptual: What is a plausible conception of crime ? What is a plausible conception of criminal law ? Some of these questions are genealogical: What are the historical and genealogical roots of the criminal law in a particular jurisdiction? Other questions are evaluative: What are the political and moral values on which a given conception of criminal law depends? What kind of rational reconstruction, …Read more