Online research in philosophy

In this challenging collection of new essays, leading philosophers and criminal lawyers from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada break with the tradition of treating the philosophical foundations of criminal law as an adjunct to the study of punishment. Focusing clearly on the central issues of moral luck, mistake, and mental illness, this volume aims to reorient the study of criminal law. In the process of retrieving valuable material from traditional law classifications, the contributors break down false associations, reveal hidden truths, and establish new patterns of thought. Their always illuminating and sometimes startling conclusions makes this essential reading for all those interested in the philosophy of criminal law.

The adversary system and the practice of law -- The rule of law -- The moral force of law -- Statutes -- Precedents -- Constitutional interpretation -- Natural law and legal positivism: classical perspectives -- Formalism and legal realism -- Morality and the law -- International law -- Law and economics -- The justification of punishment -- The rights of defendants -- Sentencing -- Criminal responsibility -- Compensating for private harms: the law of torts -- Private ownership: the law of property -- Private agreements: the law of contract -- Church and state -- Personal liberty and privacy -- Freedom of speech -- Equality.

Part III: Law vs. Legislation - Socrates on Law - Two Senses of Law - Natural Law and Human Law - Natural Law and Customary Law - Law vs. Legislation: Documentary Evidence..

I offer a new argument against the legal positivist view that non-normative social facts can themselves determine the content of the law. I argue that the nature of the determination relation in law is rational determination: the contribution of law-determining practices to the content of the law must be based on reasons. That is why it must be possible in principle to explain what makes the law have the content that it does. It follows, I argue, that non-normative facts about statutes, judicial decisions, and other practices cannot themselves determine the content of the law. A full account must appeal to considerations independent of the practices that determine the relevance of the practices to the content of the law. Normative facts are the best candidates.

In this article, I discuss various substantive and methodological issues in jurisprudence, prompted by Neil MacCormick's views in Part 4 of his Institutions of Law. I begin by surveying some contemporary legal theoretical views on whether bad law is still, or is really, law, before moving on to compare John Finnis' and Neil MacCormick's views on this question, and on related methodological issues. I attempt to develop and begin to defend a position wherein although it is necessary to understand law's aims, and the values which it ought to realise in order properly to understand its nature, the failure to achieve those aims or to realise those values does not thereby render something less than fully law.

Law, unlike morality, is made by someone. So it may, unlike morality, have aims, which are the aims of its makers (either individually or collectively). Not all law has aims, however, because not all law-making is intentional. Customary law is made by convergent actions that are performed without the intention of making law, and so without any further intention to achieve anything by making law, i.e. without any aim. There are also some other modes of accidental law-making. However for the time being we will focus on law that is intentionally made, and therefore is capable of having aims.