•  106
    This paper centers upon the issue, within the project of analytic jurisprudence, of how to construe the status of the legal activities of a state when there is a disjuncture between a nation's formal legal commitments, such as those stated within a bill or charter of rights, and the way in which its officials actually engage in the practice of law, i.e., legislation and adjudication. Although there are two positions within contemporary legal theory which focus directly on this issue (Inclusive a…Read more
  •  12
    Tech Ethics Through Trust Auditing
    Science and Engineering Ethics 28 (3): 1-15. 2022.
    The public’s trust in the technology sector is waning and, in response, technology companies and state governments have started to champion “tech ethics”. That is, they have pledged to design, develop, distribute, and employ new technologies in an ethical manner. In this paper, I observe that tech ethics is already subject to a widespread pathology in that technology companies, the primary executors of tech ethics, are incentivized to pursue it half-heartedly or even disingenuously. Next, I high…Read more
  •  6
    Book Review (review)
    Law and Philosophy 34 (4): 477-484. 2015.
  •  2
    Constitutive Rules, Criteria of Validity, and Law
    In Paolo Di Lucia & Edoardo Fittipaldi (eds.), Revisiting Searle on Deriving “Ought” From “Is”, Springer Verlag. pp. 191-210. 2021.
    This essay considers the influence that John Searle’s conception of constitutive rules has exerted within the philosophy of law. It argues that a number of influential legal philosophers have embraced the legal existence of constitutive rules, and that this has led them to misapprehend the nature of legal validity. To make this point, the chapter contends that it is natural to think of validity criteria as a particular subset of constitutive rules—a category that Amedeo Conte calls “anankastic-c…Read more