•  85
    Intoxication and the Act/Control/Agency Requirement
    Criminal Law and Philosophy 6 (3): 341-362. 2012.
    Doug Husak has argued, persuasively I think, that there is no literal ‘act requirement’ in Anglo-American law. I begin by reviewing Husak’s reasons for rejecting the act requirement, and provide additional reasons to think he is right to do so. But Husak’s alternative, the ‘control condition’, I argue, is inadequate. The control requirement is falsified by the widespread practice of holding extremely intoxicated offenders liable for criminal conduct they engage in even if they lack control over …Read more
  •  81
    Retributivism and Trust
    Law and Philosophy 16 (1): 37-62. 1997.
    No Abstract
  •  61
    I provide a brief history of the common law governing the criminal liability of intoxicated offenders, and the codification and application of the intoxication rules in Canada. I argue that the common law and its statutory application in Canada violate a number of principles of criminal justice. I then argue that the rules cannot be saved by attempts to subsume them under principles of prior fault. I end with a modest proposal for law reform
  •  48
    Reasonable women in the law
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 11 (2): 153-175. 2008.
    Standards of reasonableness are pervasive in law. Whether a belief or conduct is reasonable is determined by reference to what a ?reasonable man? similarly situated would have believed or done in similar circumstances. Feminists rightly objected that the ?reasonable man? standard was gender?biased and worked to the detriment of women. Merely replacing the ?reasonable man? with the ?reasonable person? would not be sufficient, furthermore, to right this historic wrong. Rather, in a wide range of c…Read more
  •  44
    Why All Feminists Should Be Contractarians
    Dialogue 47 (2): 273. 2008.
    ABSTRACT: In this article I defend the view that all feminists should be contractarians. Indeed, I argue that feminists should be Hobbesian or rational-choice contractarians at that. The argument proceeds by critically examining some of the main reasons why feminists have been resistant or even hostile to contractarian moral theory, and showing that the criticisms are misguided against Hobbesian versions of the theory. I conclude with a brief positive argument to the effect that contractarianism…Read more
  •  43
    Defending Non-Tuism
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 29 (2): 251-273. 1999.
    Hobbes's central insight about ethics was that it should not be understood to require that we make ourselves a prey for others. It is this insight that both varieties of contractarianism [Hobbesian and Kantian] respect. Consider a relationship between two human beings that exists for reasons of either love or duty; let us also suppose that it is a relationship that can be instrumentally valuable to both parties. In order for that relationship to receive our full moral endorsement, we must ask wh…Read more
  •  37
    Two virtues of contractarianism
    Journal of Value Inquiry 37 (3): 395-414. 2003.
  •  35
    Actio Libera in Causa
    Criminal Law and Philosophy 7 (3): 549-569. 2013.
    The actio libera in causa doctrine, as originally formulated by various Enlightenment philosophers, concerns the imputation of responsibility to actors for actions unfree in themselves, but free in their causes. Like our Enlightenment counterparts, contemporary philosophers of criminal law, as well as most Western legal systems (both common law and civil), allow that persons can be responsible for acts that are not free when performed, provided they were free in their causes. The actio libera do…Read more
  •  35
  •  27
  •  27
    Criminalizing Dangerousness: How to Preventively Detain Dangerous Offenders
    Criminal Law and Philosophy 9 (3): 537-560. 2015.
    I defend a form of preventive detention through the creation of an offence of ‘being a persistent violent dangerous offender’. This differs from alternative proposals and actual habitual offender laws that impose extra periods of incarceration on offenders after they have completed the sentence for their most recent crime or as a result of a certain number of prior convictions. I, instead, would make ‘being a persistent violent dangerous offender’ an offence itself. Persons to be preventively de…Read more
  •  25
    Against the Ethicists (Adversus Mathematicos XI) (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 52 (1): 177-180. 1998.
    Sextus Empiricus was a Pyrrhonist skeptic. Although his dates and many of the details of his life are uncertain, he probably lived in the second century A.D. Our knowledge of his philosophical skepticism is drawn primarily from a series of skeptical treatises which have survived, usually titled in English, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Against the Logicians, Against the Physicists, Against the Learned, and Against the Ethicists. These works are invaluable, not only for the insights which they provide …Read more
  •  17
    La distinction de droit pénal entre la conduitemalum in seetmalum prohibitumest vieille de cinq siècles dans les juridictions de common law, et pourtant son sens autant que son utilité continuent d’être débattus. Je me joins à la mêlée, en faisant valoir que les conditions ne peuvent pas être interprétées littéralement, mais que il existe un moyen d’établir la distinction qui est à la fois plausible et utile. Une conduitemala in seest un comportement quidoitêtre interdit dans toute société polit…Read more
  •  16
    Liberal Neutrality
    Journal of Value Inquiry 34 (2/3): 189-206. 2000.
  •  14
    Introduction
    Journal of Value Inquiry 37 (3): 301-311. 2003.
  •  9
    Introduction
    Journal of Value Inquiry 34 (2/3): 151-166. 2000.
  • Personal Autonomy
    Dissertation, Dalhousie University (Canada). 1994.
    This dissertation provides a philosophical analysis of personal autonomy. Personal autonomy is defined as the condition of being self-directed. The conditions which make such self-direction possible are then explored. ;Self-direction requires that one's actions are motivated by authentic reasons for action. One makes some of one's desires authentic by critically reflecting upon and identifying with them. One identifies with a particular desire when one approves of it as a reason for action, thus…Read more