•  3
    Philosophical Foundations of Eu Law
    Oxford University Press UK. 2012.
    The supranational law of the European Union represents a uniquely powerful, far-reaching, and controversial instance of the growth of international legal governance, one that has forever altered the political and legal landscape of its Member States. The EU has attracted significant attention from political scientists, economists, and lawyers who have analysed its polity and constructed theoretical models of the integration process. Yet it has been almost entirely neglected by analytic philosoph…Read more
  •  5
    Can that be law for me?
    Jurisprudence 1-16. forthcoming.
    In his wide ranging and carefully argued book The Long Arc of Legality David Dyzenhaus offers a new general theory of law.1 The book is a major contribution to jurisprudence. I can only offer here...
  •  9
    Legal Judgment as Self‐Mastery
    Ratio Juris 36 (2): 113-135. 2023.
    Many legal theorists see legal judgment as a largely professional or technical task. This is not how law sees itself. When looked at from the perspective of the engaged judge, law requires from us that we arrive at a certain internal governance of our thoughts and emotions. Legal scholarship and legal procedure tell us that law creates true reasons that override other, personal, reasons, even those of the utmost importance to us. A philosophical understanding of law requires a distinct argument …Read more
  •  4
    Descriptive Jurisprudence
    Problema. Anuario de Filosofía y Teoria Del Derecho 1 (5): 117-145. 2011.
    Hart said that analytical jurisprudence is descriptive and general but did not draw an explicit distinction between conceptual questions that are in the main theoretical and others that are in the main practical. In Hart’s account, analytical jurisprudence searches for some kind of clarity about the idea of law and the other basic legal ideas as they occur in our ordinary experience. In the Postscript he explains that jurisprudence is the ‘theoretical or scientific study of law as a social pheno…Read more
  •  6
    Rights in the Balance
    Jus Cogens 4 (2): 181-192. 2022.
    Professor Walen’s book rejects the familiar argument of “double effect,” namely the doctrine that an action that knowingly causes the death of another person cannot be justified merely by its good consequences but only by its good intentions. Professor Walen offers a rival argument. He proposes that we rethink the killing of non-combatants in war on the basis of a theory of “the mechanics of claims” so that the intentional killing of civilians may be occasionally permissible. Such targeting of c…Read more
  •  1
    Human Rights for Liberals
    Global Justice : Theory Practice Rhetoric 3. 2014.
    Review: James Griffin, On Human Rights, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.’
  •  16
    Many political and legal philosophers compare the EU to a federal union and believe its basic laws should be subject to the standards of constitutional law, and thus find it lacking or incomplete. This book proposes a rival theory: that the substance of EU law is not constitutional, but international, and provides a close examination of the treaties and the precedents of the European courts to explore this concept further. Just like international law, EU law applies primarily to the relations be…Read more
  •  7
    Corrective Justice Among States
    Jus Cogens 2 (1): 7-27. 2020.
    The debate concerning solidarity and justice among states has missed the key contribution made to international affairs by corrective justice. Unlike distributive justice, which applies within states, corrective justice applies among states. It applies in particular to cooperative arrangements creating interdependence among them. Corrective justice does not require fairness in outcomes. It requires redress in cases of loss caused by unfairness. An illustration of corrective justice among states …Read more
  •  1
    Human Rights for Liberals (review)
    Global Justice Theory Practice Rhetoric 3 42-48. 2010.
    Review: James Griffin, On Human Rights, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.’
  •  27
    Power and Principle in Constitutional Law
    Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy 45 (2): 37-56. 2016.
    Legal and sociological theories of sovereignty disagree about the role of legal and social matters in grounding state power. This paper defends a constructivist view, according to which the constitution is a judgment of practical reason. The paper argues that a constitution sets out a comprehensive institutional architecture of social life in terms of principles and official roles that are necessary for any legitimate scheme of social cooperation to exist. It follows that legal and sociological …Read more
  •  8
    Human Rights for Liberals (review)
    Global Justice: Theory Practice Rhetoric 3 42-48. 2010.
    Review: James Griffin, On Human Rights, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.’
  •  54
    The Moral Distinctiveness of the European Union
    International Journal of Constitutional Law. forthcoming.
    This article is a comment and reflection on Joseph Weiler’s essay ‘The Political and Legal Culture of the European Union: an Exploratory Essay.’ The article responds to Weiler’s argument by sketching a philosophical framework within which we may understand the moral distinctness of the European Union. The argument is informed by the international political theories outlined by Kant and Rawls, according to which the domain of international institutions is distinct from that of domestic politics. …Read more
  •  682
    The Law of Laws
    Transnational Legal Theory 1 (3). forthcoming.
    How can legal orders coexist? Contemporary lawyers and philosophers frequently accept that a legal system operates under its own terms and is shaped by its own participants. Any problems posed by the plurality of legal orders in the world are to be dealt with by each legal order separately. So persons that are caught in transnational disputes because they are subject to two or more jurisdictions, have recourse to private international law, which is always part of domestic law, i.e. the law where…Read more
  •  67
    A Symposium on Nigel Simmonds's Law as a Moral Idea
    Jurisprudence 1 (2): 241-244. 2010.
    This issue of Jurisprudence features a symposium on Nigel Simmonds's Law as a Moral Idea. There are essays by John Finnis, John Gardner, Timothy Endicott and a Reply by Nigel Simmonds. The papers are based on presentations given at a panel discussion in Oxford in December 2009. In this 'Introduction' Pavlos Eleftheriadis outlines the main themes of the book, namely that the idea of law is intrinsically moral, the distinction between analytical and normative jurisprudence is false and law is not …Read more
  •  84
    Pluralism and Integrity
    Ratio Juris 23 (3): 365-389. 2010.
    One of the theoretical developments associated with the law of the European Union has been the flourishing of legal and constitutional theories that extol the virtues of pluralism. Pluralism in constitutional theory is offered in particular as a novel argument for the denial of unity within a framework of constitutional government. This paper argues that pluralism fails to respect the value of integrity. It also shows that at least one pluralist theory seeks to overcome the incoherence of plural…Read more
  •  15
    Philosophical Foundations of European Union Law (edited book)
    Oxford University Press UK. 2012.
    The supranational law of the European Union represents a uniquely powerful, far-reaching, and controversial instance of the growth of international legal governance, one that has forever altered the political and legal landscape of its Member States. The EU has attracted significant attention from political scientists, economists, and lawyers who have analysed its polity and constructed theoretical models of the integration process. Yet it has been almost entirely neglected by analytic philosoph…Read more
  •  6
  •  3
    Parliamentary Sovereignty and the Constitution
    Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 22 (2): 267-290. 2009.
    The doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty of the United Kingdom parliament is often presented as a unique legal arrangement, one without parallel in comparative constitutional law. By giving unconditional power to the Westminster parliament, it appears to rule out any comparison between the Westminster Parliament and the United States Congress or the German Bundestag, whose powers are limited by their respective constitutions. Parliament in the UK appears to determine the law unconditionally and…Read more
  • Austin and the Electors
    Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 24 (2): 441-453. 2011.
    Austin's theory of theory of law is simple: the law follows the pattern of power; the sovereign gives commands and obeys none; the subject obeys commands; the law consists in only those commands that directly or indirectly emanate from the sovereign. Nevertheless, Austin's theory of sovereignty is not simple at all. When we look at the relevant chapters closely, it becomes evident that Austin has two rival theories of sovereignty, one for a single person and one for a 'determinate body'. It is o…Read more
  •  146
    Law and sovereignty
    Law and Philosophy 29 (5): 535-569. 2010.
    How is it possible that the idea of sovereignty still features in legal and political philosophy? Most contemporary political philosophers have little use for the idea of ‘unlimited’ or ‘absolute’ power, which is how sovereignty is normally defined. A closer look at sovereignty identifies two possible accounts: sovereignty as the fact of power or sovereignty as a title to govern. The first option, which was pursued by John Austin’s command theory of law, leads to an unfamiliar view of law and th…Read more
  •  91
    Citizenship and Obligation
    In Julie Dickson & Pavlos Eleftheriadis (eds.), Philosophical Foundations of European Union Law, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    Many political philosophers believe that we owe moral obligations to our political communities simply because we are asked. We are, for example to pay taxes, or serve in the army whenever we are demanded to do so by the competent authorities or agencies. Can such moral obligations be created by European Union institutions? This essay discusses the natural duty of justice to support just or nearly just political institutions as defended by John Rawls and Jeremy Waldron. It suggests that European …Read more
  •  44
    The Idea of a European Constitution
    Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 27 (1): 1-21. 2005.
    Any abstract account of a field of law must make generalizations that are both faithful to the legal materials and appropriate to the subject matter's aims. The uniqueness and fluidity of the European Union's institutions makes such generalizations very difficult. A common theoretical approach to EU law (one that is often relied upon by the Court of Justice, the Parliament and the Commission) is to borrow directly from the theory of domestic constitutional law. The most recent manifestation of t…Read more
  •  74
    A Right to Health Care
    Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 40 (2): 268-285. 2012.
    Do we have a legal and moral right to health care against others? There are international conventions and institutions that say emphatically yes, and they summarize this in the expression of “the right to health,” which is an established part of the international human rights canon. The International Covenant on Social and Economic Rights outlines this as “the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health,” but declarations such as this remai…Read more
  •  38
    Legal rights
    Oxford University Press. 2008.
    How can there be rights in law? We learn from moral philosophy that rights protect persons in a special way because they have peremptory force. But how can this aspect of practical reason be captured by the law? For many leading legal philosophers the legal order is constructed on the foundations of factual sources and with materials provided by technical argument. For this 'legal positivist' school of jurisprudence, the law endorses rights by some official act suitably communicated. But how can…Read more