This is a concise and profound book from one of the world's leading political and legal philosophers about a major theme, equality, and the proposition that humans are all one another's equals. Jeremy Waldron explores the implications of this fundamental tenet for law, politics, society and economy in the company of John Locke, whose work Waldron regards 'as well-worked-out a theory of basic equality as we have in the canon of political philosophy'. Throughout the text, which is based (...) on the Carlyle Lectures given in Oxford in 1999, Jeremy Waldron discusses contemporary approaches to equality and rival interpretations of Locke, and this dual agenda gives the whole an unusual degree of accessibility and intellectual excitement, of interest to philosophers, political theorists, lawyers and theologians around the world. (shrink)
Toleration has a rich tradition in Western political philosophy. It is, after all, one of the defining topics of political philosophy—historically pivotal in the development of modern liberalism, prominent in the writings of such canonical figures as John Locke and John Stuart Mill, and central to our understanding of the idea of a society in which individuals have the right to live their own lives by their own values, left alone by the state so long as they respect the similar (...) interests of others. -/- Toleration and Its Limits, the latest addition to the NOMOS series, explores the philosophical nuances of the concept of toleration and its scope in contemporary liberal democratic societies. Editors Melissa S. Williams and Jeremy Waldron carefully compiled essays that address the tradition's key historical figures; its role in the development and evolution of Western political theory; its relation to morality, liberalism, and identity; and its limits and dangers. -/- Contributors: Lawrence A. Alexander, Kathryn Abrams, Wendy Brown, Ingrid Creppell, Noah Feldman, Rainer Forst, David Heyd, Glyn Morgan, Glen Newey, Michael A. Rosenthal, Andrew Sabl, Steven D. Smith, and Alex Tuckness. (shrink)
0n a lucid, concise volume, Jeremy Waldron defends the role of legislation, presenting it as an important mode of governance. Aristotle, Locke and Kant emerge as proponents of the dignity of legislation. Waldron's arguments are of obvious importance and topicality, especially in countries that are considering the introduction of a Bill of Rights. The Dignity of Legislation is original in conception, trenchantly argued and very clearly presented, and will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and (...) thinkers. (shrink)
Jeremy Waldron has been a challenging and influential voice in the moral, political and legal debates surrounding the response to terrorism since 9/11. His contributions have spanned the major controversies of the War on Terror - including the morality and legality of torture, whether security can be 'balanced' with liberty, and the relationship between public safety and individual rights. He has also tackled underlying questions essential to understanding the practical debates - including what terrorism is, and what a right (...) to security would entail. -/- This volume collects all Waldron's work on these issues, including six published essays and two previously unpublished essays. It also includes a new introduction in which Waldron presents an overview of his contribution, and looks at the problems currently facing the Obama administration and the UK Government in dealing with the legacy of the Bush White House. -/- The volume will be essential reading for all those engaged with contemporary politics, security law, and the continuing struggle for an ethical response to terrorism. (shrink)
Can the right to private property be claimed as one of the `rights of mankind'? This is the central question of this comprehensive and critical examination of the subject of private property. Jeremy Waldron contrasts two types of arguments about rights: those based on historical entitlement, and those based on the importance of property to freedom. He provides a detailed discussion of the theories of property found in Locke's Second Treatise and Hegel's Philosophy of Right to illustrate this contrast. (...) The book contains original analyses of the concept of ownership, the ideas of rights, and the relation between property and equality. The author's overriding determination throughout is to follow through the arguments and values used to justify private ownership. He finds that the traditional arguments about property yield some surprisingly radical conclusions. (shrink)
Do property entitlements define the moral environment in which rights to well-being are defined, or do rights to well-being define the moral environment in which property entitlements are defined? Robert Nozick argued for the former alternative and he denied that any serious attempt had been made to state the latter alternative (what he called “the ‘reverse’ theory”). I actually think John Locke's approach to property can be seen as an instance of the “reverse” theory. And Nozick's can too, inasmuch as (...) it shares a number of features with the Lockean approach. But my paper is not intended as a criticism of Nozick; on the contrary, it acknowledges the integrity and the importance of his insistence that welfare, property, and justice be integrated into a single theory with clearly established priorities. (shrink)
This is a three-part study and defense of the idea of basic human equality. (This is the idea that humans are basically one another's equals, as opposed to more derivative theories of the dimensions in which we ought to be equal or the particular implications that equality might have for public policy.) Part (1) of the paper examines the very idea of basic equality and it tries to elucidate it by considering what an opponent of basic human equality (e.g. a (...) philosophical racist) might hold. It explores the idea of there being no morally significant fundamental divisions among humans (of the kind that some people insist on as between humans and others animals). Part (2) considers whether basic human equality must be based on some descriptive similarity among us (naturalistic or metaphysical); it considers the positions of a number of thinkers who have denied this. Part (3) considers John Rawls's conception of basic equality in terms of range properties. (Being in Ohio is a range property; Columbus and Cincinnati are both equally in Ohio even though even though Columbus is in the center of the state, while Cincinnati is just over the river from Kentucky.) It explores the application of this Rawlsian idea to the descriptive properties that might be thought relevant to human equality. This three part paper is a rather technical philosophical exploration. And it is just a beginning; we need much more work on the idea of basic equality. Some of the energy that has gone into discussions of equality as a policy aim (e.g. in the Dworkin/Sen literature or in the literature surrounding Rawls's Difference Principle) needs to be devoted to this more fundamental conception. (shrink)
I argue against the idea (made popular by H.L.A. Hart) that the key to a legal system is its "rule of recognition." I argue that much of the work allegedly done by a rule of recognition is either done by a different kind of secondary rule (what Hart called "a rule of change") or it is not done at all (and doesn't have to be done). A rule of change tells us the procedures that must be followed and the substantive (...) conditions that must be satisfied if law is to be changed legislatively; and a judge "recognizes" changes simply by using this checklist. In common law, there is no clear rule of change (because we are profoundly ambivalent about judicial lawmaking). But we get by without one, and without a determinate rule of recognition that would tell us precisely how to infer rules from precedents. It is quite liberating, really, to abandon the idea of a rule of recognition. Apart from anything else, it relieves us from having to participate in endless debates about whether the US Constitution is (or contains) a rule of recognition for American law. The Constitution contains rules of change; that's what matters. (shrink)
This paper examines the role of political participation in a theory of rights. If political participation is a right, how does it stand in relation to other rights about which the participants may be making political decisions? Suppose a majority of citizens vote in favour of some limit on (say) the free exercise of religion. If their decision is allowed to stand, does that mean that we are giving more weight to the right to participate than to the right to (...) religious freedom? In this paper, I argue that talk of conflict (and relative weightings) of rights is inappropriate in a case like this. I argue that the special role of participation in a theory of rights is not a matter of its being given moral priority over other rights. Instead it's a matter of this being a right whose exercise seems peculiarly appropriate, from a rights-based point of view, in situations where reasonable right-bearers disagree about what (other) rights they have. (shrink)
This paper asks how we should regard the laws and customs of armed conflict, and specifically the rule prohibiting the targeting of civilians. What view should we take of the moral character and significance of such rules? Some philosophers have suggested that they are best regarded as useful conventions. This view is sometimes motivated by a "deep moral critique" of the rule protecting civilians: Jeff McMahan believes for example that the existing rules protect some who ought to be liable to (...) attack (on account of their having voluntarily contributed to the injustice or aggression being resisted). He thinks we would be better off with a different principle of discrimination in warfare. But McMahan acknowledges that for the time being we must stick with the rules that we have. The present paper does five things: (1) it explores and takes further some of McMahan's insights about the importance of existing positive law in this area; (2) it argues that some of the features that philosophers find problematic with the rule offering blanket protection to all civilians have to do with administrability; (3) it raises some questions about whether the rule protecting civilians can really be regarded as a convention (and it argues that certainly it cannot be regarded as a "Lewis-convention" in a strict sense); (4) to the extent that the rule can be regarded as conventional, the paper argues that it remains a deadly serious moral rule, partly because of the circumstances of death and destruction in which it operates and which it tries to ameliorate, and partly on account of its fragility. The fifth point is the most important. (5) The rule protecting civilians does not operate in circumstances in which, apart form positive law, civilians like everyone would be liable to attack. The rule operates against a moral background in which all deliberate killing is to be regarded as murder; some deliberate killings (of combatants) are privileged in warfare; but the rule about civilians reflects the fact that this is a strictly limited privilege and that those who target civilians do not get the benefit of it. Changing our view of the default position in this way enables us to better understand the distinctive work that this rule does. (shrink)
Surgeons have often been portrayed in literature on one of two extremes: the cold, distant scientist or the benign, caring humanist. Two characters in American literature who illustrate those extremes, both surgeons in the military, are Herman Melville's Cadwallader Cuticle and Richard Hooker's Hawkeye Pierce. Cuticle is interested only in the science of his craft, while Pierce maintains the compassion so central to the art of healing, even in the midst of war.
Jeremy Waldron’s Law and Disagreement1 is an extremely important and influential book. Not only is it probably the best known recent text presenting the case against judicial review, but it is also rich in details and arguments regarding related but distinct issues such as the history of political philosophy, the relevance of metaethics to political philosophy, the desirable structure of legislative bodies, the justification of democracy and majoritarianism, Rawls’ political philosophy, and much more. In commenting on such rich work, (...) then, the difficulty is not to find things to disagree (or indeed agree) with, but rather to pick and choose among the many topics one can discuss. Below I focus on what seem to me like central difficulties in the more general political philosophy Waldron seems to endorse, and in its application to the topic of judicial review. (shrink)
Jeremy Waldron argued that the government lawyers responsible for the ‘torture memos’ acted unprofessionally by undermining the prohibition on torture. He did so partly on the basis that that the torture prohibition represents a ‘legal archetype’ which cannot be undermined without doing considerable harm to large bodies of law. This paper argues that, however much intuitive appeal Waldron’s archetype-based analysis may have, its force is inherently limited. This is so for two reasons. First, the claim that the torture (...) prohibition is an archetype for non-brutality can only make a meaningful difference to the integrity of the legal order insofar as ‘brutality’ is understood widely. Waldron, though, reads ‘brutality’ in a narrow fashion. Second, and more importantly, the claim that archetypes are uniquely important to legal reasoning and the legal order is deeply problematic. (shrink)
Philosophers on Education provides the most comprehensive history of philosphers' views and impacts on the direction of education, from Plato to Dewey. As Amelie Oksenberg Rorty explains in describing a history of education, we are essentially describing and gaining the clearest understanding of the issues that presently concern and divide us. Philosophical reflection on education has usually been directed to the education of rulers, to those who are presumed to preserve and transmit--or to redirect and transform--the culture of sociey, its (...) knowledge and values. Every historical era is marked by a struggle among claimants to that power. It is only late in the history of liberal democracies that educational policy was formulated for and directed toward autonomous individuals who structure their own lives. The contributors to this collection recognize that history remains actively embedded and expressed in society's beliefs and practices, and that the study of the history of philosophy mandates reflection on its implications for education. The all new essays are written by some of the finest contemporary philosophers: Elizabeth Anderson, Annette C. Baier, Frederick B. Beiser, Eva T. H. Brann, M.F. Burnyeat, William Galston, Daniel Garber, Peter Gay, Alvin I. Goldman, Moshe Halbertal, Tova Hartman Halbertal, Simon Harrison, Barbara Herman, Genevieve Lloyd, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard W. Miller, Roy P. Mottahedeh, Adam Phillips, Philip L. Quinn, C.D.C. Reeve, Patrick Riley, Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, Emma Rothschild, Alan Ryan, Richard Schacht, Josef Stern, Richard Tuck, Thomas E. Uebel, Jeremy Waldron, Allen Wood, Paul Woodruff, Jean S. Yolton, John W. Yolton, Zhang LoShan (pseudonym). (shrink)
This article challenges Jeremy Waldron's arguments in favour of participatory majoritarianism, and against constitutional judicial review. First, I consider and critique Waldron's arguments against instrumentalist justifications of political authority. My central claim is that although the right to democratic participation is intrinsically valuable, it does not displace the central importance of the `instrumental condition of good government': political decision-making mechanisms should be chosen (primarily) on the basis of their conduciveness to good results. I then turn to an examination (...) of Waldron's claim that individuals are entitled to participate in decisions which affect their lives. Furthermore, I respond to his claim that justifications of constitutional judicial review rely on an objectionable distrust of democratic politics, and is inconsistent with a view of the person as a morally responsible, autonomous agent. Finally, I seek to show that judicial review can itself become a valuable channel of political participation, especially for those who are marginalized and disempowered in the normal political process. (shrink)
This essay disputes one of the central claims in Jeremy Waldron?s God, Locke, and Equality (2002), that being the claim that Locke?s arguments about species in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding undercut his assertions about the equality of the human species as a matter of natural law in Two Treatises of Government. It argues, firstly, and pace Waldron, that Locke?s view of natural law is foundational to his view of man, not vice versa, and, secondly, that Two Treatises (...) is written in an idiom different from Locke?s philosophical writings, such that directly transposing the ideas discussed in one idiom to the other is as confused as it is confusing. After providing a new account of the relationship between Locke?s philosophy and his views of morality, politics and religion, the essay concludes that Waldron fails to grasp the style and structure of Locke?s thinking, and so cumulatively misunderstands and distorts Locke?s views about moral identity, toleration, religion and politics alike. (shrink)
The law within each legal system is a function of the practices of some social group. In short, law is a kind of socially grounded norm. H.L.A Hart famously developed this view in his book, The Concept of Law, by arguing that law derives from a social rule, the so-called “rule of recognition.” But the proposition that social facts play a foundational role in producing law is a point of consensus for all (...) modern jurisprudents in the Anglo-American tradition: not just Hart and his followers in the positivist school, most prominently Joseph Raz and Jules Coleman, but also the anti-positivist Ronald Dworkin, who argues that law necessarily synthesizes moral considerations with social facts. But which group’s practices ground each legal system? In particular, which group’s practices undergird U.S. law? Positivists since Hart have universally pointed to either officials or judges as the “recognitional community” (my term): the group such that its rules, conventions, cooperative activities, or practices in some other sense are the social facts from which the law of a given legal system derives. So Hart and all other positivists would identify either U.S. officials or U.S. judges as the recognitional community for U.S. law. This Article grapples with the tension between the positivist’s official- or judge-centered account of the recognitional community and the “popular constitutionalism” now so widely defended by constitutional scholars such as Larry Kramer, Robert Post, Reva Siegel, Mark Tushnet, Jeremy Waldron, and many others. Surely the popular constitutionalist would want to claim that U.S. citizens, not judges or officials, are the recognitional community for U.S. law. I term this position “deep popular constitutionalism.” Indeed, it turns out that Dworkin’s account of law, in its ambition to generate associative moral obligations for the citizenry as a whole, implies deep popular constitutionalism. Here there is a disagreement, hitherto unnoticed, between Dworkin and the positivists. My solution to this disagreement – to the debate between deep popular constitutionalists and deep official or judicial supremacists -- is to dissolve it by providing a group-relative account of law. Social norms, such as norms of dress or eating, are clearly group-relative. A particular dressing or eating behavior may be socially appropriate relative to one group’s norms, yet socially inappropriate relative to another’s. This Article extends the group-relative view from social norms to law itself, with a particular focus on U.S. law and constitutionalism. Part I surveys the jurisprudential literature. It shows how Hart and successor positivists identify the rule of recognition as a social practice engaged in by officials or some subset of officials (judges), rather than citizens generally, and argues that Dworkin by contrast sees the citizenry as a whole as his recognitional community. Parts II and III defend a group-relative account of law. Part II argues, with reference to the U.S. experience, that multiple groups can simultaneously instantiate the kind of social fact that undergirds law, be it a convention, a social norm, a “shared cooperative activity” (SCA), or something else. At many points in U.S. constitutional history, multiple official or citizen groups, defined along departmental, partisan, regional, state-federal, religious, or other lines, have accepted competing rules of recognition for U.S. law. Part III argues that “law” functions, primarily, as either an explanatory or a normative construct, and that insisting on a single recognitional community for each legal system would be arbitrary, both for explanatory purposes and for normative purposes. Part IV considers the many implications of the group-relative account for U.S. constitutional theory – in particular, for popular constitutionalism. (shrink)
I try in this essay to accomplish two things. First I offer some first thoughts toward a clarification of the ethical foundations of private property rights that avoids pitfalls common to more strictly Lockean theories, and is thus better prepared to address arguments posed by critics of standard private property arrangements. Second, I'll address one critical argument that has become pretty common over the years. While versions of the argument can be traced back at least to Pierre Joseph Proudhon, I'll (...) focus on a formulation given it by Jeremy Waldron. The basic idea is that the only sound arguments for private property rights lead to the conclusion that society has an obligation to insure that every citizen possess private property. In Waldron's formulation, what is justifiable is a general, rather than a special, right to private property. I shall try to suggest that this conclusion is unwarranted. (shrink)
Jeremy Waldron has recently raised the question of whether there is anything approximating the creative self-authorship of personal autonomy in the writings of Immanuel Kant. After considering the possibility that Kantian prudential reasoning might serve as a conception of personal autonomy, I argue that the elements of a more suitable conception can be found in Kant’s Tugendlehre or Doctrine of Virtue--specifically, in the imperfect duties of self-perfection and the practical love of others. This discovery is important for at least (...) three reasons: first, it elucidates the relationship among the various conceptions of autonomy employed by personal-autonomy theorists and contemporary Kantians; second, it brings to the surface previously unnoticed or undernoticed features of Kant's moral theory; and third, it provides an essential line of defense against certain critiques of contemporary Kantian theories, especially that of John Rawls. (shrink)
The semiotic investigation of the divine or transcendent authoriality of religious law involves, in the context of discussions concerning the propriety or impropriety of the influence of religion in “secular” political and legal systems, preliminary boundary work to discern the meanings of “religion”, “secular”, and “belief.” Jeremy Waldron’s account of the propriety of religion in “secular” politics, mirroring but reversing John Rawls’ account of religion’s impropriety in that context, can be contrasted with neo-Calvinist (and other) conceptions of pluralism and (...) the inevitability of fundamental “beliefs” in all political and legal thought. In the latter perspectives, religious believers are neither unique in their appeal to transcendent values, nor relegated to advancing theocracy (because pluralism is conceived as a religious value rather than religion’s opposite). A workable alternative to the conventional discourse of religious influence in politics and law is therefore evident. (shrink)
Professor Robert Alexy wrote a book whose avowed purpose is to refute the basic tenets of a type of legal theory which 'has long since been obsolete in legal science and practice'. The quotation is from the German Federal Constitutional Court in 1968. The fact that Prof Alexy himself mentions no writings in the legal positivist tradition [in English] later than Hart's The Concept of Law (1961) may suggest that he shares the court's view. The book itself may be evidence (...) to the contrary. After all why flog a dead horse? Why write a book to refute a totally discredited theory? Perhaps Alexy was simply unlucky. The burst of reflective, suggestive and interesting writings in the legal positivist tradition reached serious dimensions only in the years after the original publication of his book, when Waldron, Marmor, Gardner, Leiter, Shapiro, Murphy, Himma, Kramer, Endicott, Lamont, Dickson, Bix and others joined those who had made important contributions to legal theory in the positivistic tradition in the years preceding the original publication of Alexy's book: Lyons, Coleman, Campbell, Harris, Green, Waluchow and others, who are still among the main contributors to legal theory in the positivist tradition. It is a great shame that nothing in these writings influenced the arguments of the book. Perhaps this regret is misplaced. After all ‘positivism' in legal theory means, and always did mean, different things to different people. What Radbruch, one of Alexy's heroes, meant when he first saw himself as a legal positivist and then recanted was not the same as what 'legal positivism' means in Britain (and nowadays in the United States as well) among those who engage in philosophical reflection about the nature of law. Perhaps Alexy is simply addressing himself to a German audience, and refuting, or attempting to refute, legal theories of a kind identified in Germany as 'legal positivism'. Perhaps, though his references to Hart show that he does not intend it that way. My aims in this chapter are, however, reasonably clear. My main purpose is to explore whether any of Alexy's arguments challenge any of the views which I have advocated. Subsidiary aims are, first, to clarify why what Alexy says is legal positivism is not what is understood as such in the English speaking world, so that some of Alexy's sound points find no target; secondly, to try and clarify some of his arguments which I found, at least initially, rather obscure. Given the prominence of Alexy's book I will refer only to it, and will not consider his other publications. (shrink)
Machine generated contents note: 1. Introduction Seyla Benhabib; Part I. Freedom, Equality, and Responsibility: 2. Arendt on the foundations of equality Jeremy Waldron; 3. Arendt's Augustine Roy T. Tsao; 4. The rule of the people: Arendt, archê, and democracy Patchen Markell; 5. Genealogies of catastrophe: Arendt on the logic and legacy of imperialism Karuna Mantena; 6. On race and culture: Hannah Arendt and her contemporaries Richard H. King; Part II. Sovereignty, the Nation-State and the Rule of Law: 7. Banishing (...) the sovereign? Internal and external sovereignty in Arendt Andrew Arato and Jean Cohen; 8. The decline of order: Hannah Arendt and the paradoxes of the nation-state Christian Volk; 9. The Eichmann trial and the legacy of jurisdiction Leora Bilsky; 10. International law and human plurality in the shadow of totalitarianism: Hannah Arendt and Raphael Lemkin Seyla Benhabib; Part III. Politics in Dark Times: 11. In search of a miracle: Hannah Arendt and the atomic bomb Jonathan Schell; 12. Hannah Arendt between Europe and America: optimism in dark times Benjamin R. Barber; 13. Keeping the republic: reading Arendt's On Revolution after the fall of the Berlin Wall Dick Howard; Part IV. Judging Evil: 14. Are Arendt's reflections on evil still relevant? Richard Bernstein; 15. Banality reconsidered Susan Neiman; 16. The elusiveness of Arendtian judgment Bryan Garsten; 17. Existential values in Arendt's treatment of evil and morality George Kateb. (shrink)
Machine generated contents note: -- 1. The Value of Vagueness, Timothy Endicott -- 2. Vagueness and the Guidance of Action, Jeremy Waldron -- 3. What Vagueness and Inconsistency tell us about Interpretation, Scott Soames -- 4. Textualism and the Discovery of Rights, John Perry -- 5. The Intentionalism of Textualism, Stephen Neale -- 6. Can the Law Imply More than It Says? On some pragmatic aspects of Strategic Speech, Andrei Marmor -- 7. Modeling Legal Rules, Richard Holton -- 8. (...) Trying to Kill the Dead: De Dicto and De Re Intention in Attempted Crimes, Gideon Yaffe -- 9. Philosophy of Language and the Law of Contracts, Gideon Rosen -- 10. Language and Law: Who's in Charge?, Mark Greenberg -- 11. Meaning and Impact, Nicos Stavropoulos. (shrink)
Politically, as well as philosophically, concerns with human rights have permeated many of the most important debates on social justice worldwide for fully a half-century. Henry Shue's 1980 book on Basic Rights proved to be a pioneering contribution to those debates, and one that continues to elicit both critical and constructive comment. Global Basic Rights brings together many of the most influential contemporary writers in political philosophy and international relations - Charles Beitz, Robert Goodin, Christian Reus-Smit, Andrew Hurrell, Judith Lichtenberg, (...) Elizabeth Ashford, Thomas Pogge, Neta Crawford, Richard Miller, David Luban, Jeremy Waldron and Simon Caney- to explore some of the most challenging theoretical and practical questions that Shue's work provokes. These range from the question of the responsibilities of the global rich to redress severe poverty to the permissibility of using torture to gain information to fight international terrorism. The contributors explore the continuing value of the idea of "basic rights" in understanding moral challenges as diverse as child labor and global climate change. (shrink)
This article addresses the question of how, if at all, citizens can sustain an effective sense of political belonging without sacrificing other sources of ethical identity. We begin with a critical analysis of Rousseau's classic considerations of politics and religion, which concludes that membership of a sub-political ethical community is incompatible with an effective sense of political belonging.This critique leads us to a consideration of the basic character of contemporary constitutional-democratic polities (drawing on the work of James Tully) and of (...)Waldron's account of the circumstances of politics.These considerations are developed into the claim that we can identify two sources of political belonging: recognition and acknowledgement - which correspond to two aspects of democratic citizenship: as status and as mode of being. On the basis of this claim, we argue that an effective sense of political belonging can be compatible with membership of sub-political ethical communities iff members of the political community are characterised by the majoritarian virtue of civic responsiveness and the minoritarian virtue of civic endurance. We sketch the character of these virtues and the relationship to one another in arguing that only the widespread presence of both kinds of virtue is sufficient to secure citizens' confidence in the polity and hence its stability. (shrink)
ALTHOUGH majority rule finds ready acceptance whenever groups make decisions, there are surprisingly few philosophically interesting arguments in support of it.1 Jeremy Waldron’s The Dignity of Legislation contains the most interesting recent defense of majority rule. Waldron combines his own argument from respect with May’s influential characterization of majority rule, tying both to a reinterpretation of a well-known passage from Locke’s Second Treatise (“the body moves into the direction determined by the majority of forces”). Despite its impressive resourcefulness, (...)Waldron’s defense is deficient, and one goal of this essay is to show how. Yet our main concern is not to criticize Waldron, but to demonstrate general deficiencies of arguments for majority rule and to suggest a strategy for a more adequate and more complete defense. Such arguments tend to have one of two weaknesses: Either they assume that collective decisionmaking is done in terms of ranking options and thus neglect both aggregation methods using more information than the relative standing of options in rankings (such as so-called positional methods) and rules that are not aggregation methods at all (such as fair-division procedures); or they also constitute arguments for other decision rules. In the first case, the argument is too narrow, in the second it is too broad. The narrowness problem is bigger than stated so far because arguments for majority rule tend to assume not only that decisions are made by ranking options, but also that only two options are to be ranked. Both problems arise for Waldron’s defense and leave it incomplete. Yet such incompleteness also characterizes the state of the art in arguing for majority rule. So in addition to.. (shrink)
Perhaps we should change our focus from constitutionalized practices of democracy to democratized practices of constitutionalism. Dworkin and Perry both seek to respond to democratic objections to judicial review by relying on a theory of the legitimacy constraints of democracy itself. According to this view, on some matters, legitimate democracy requires getting the right moral answers. Thus democratic processes must be constitutionalized to ensure such right outcomes on fundamental moral matters. To the extent that judges are better positioned to engage (...) in principled moral reasoning, the arguments continue, we ought to entrust them with ensuring the constitutionalized legitimacy conditions of democracy. I argued that this latter institutional move, however, threatened to simply revive the paternalist worries forcefully articulated by Learned Hand. Waldron’s rights-based objection to rightsbased judicial review, although not dispositive, provided further warning of the moral costs of treating fellow citizens as incapable of reasoning together about the content and proper scope of the legal rights required for democracy. An alternative strategy for justifying judicial review that this chapter investigates is to understand a constitution itself as a product of true democracy, of real popular sovereignty. It is then up to the people, exercising their constituent power at the level of a constitutional assembly, to decide what particular institutional arrangements will best carry forward their collective ideals and decisions. The specific character and structure of those arrangements—whether they are populist or elitist, deliberative or aggregative, sensitive or insulated, electorally accountable or politically independent, and so on—is then a secondary matter. What is central is that the constitutional arrangements the people decide on are, first and foremost, democratically legitimated by the fact that they are the result of authentic popular sovereignty.. (shrink)
Cosmopolitan concern for the whole world is often treated as oppositional to particular collectivities, to corresponding sensibilities and to the obligations that follow from them. Tensions revolve around demands made upon the self (depending on the emphasis on the local or the global) and infuse educational discourse accordingly. Culturalism approaches the self as a culturally or multiculturally shaped identity, monopolises the terrain of cosmopolitan debate and narrows the scope of cosmopolitan education only to encouraging hybridity of selfhood and to cultivating (...) respect and tolerance of global diversity. In this article, I discuss Jeremy Waldron's conception of cosmopolitan selfhood by drawing on the exemplary status attributed to specific manifestations of hybrid identity. What will gradually emerge from my discussion is, hopefully, a broadening of cosmopolitan demands upon the self and an emphasis on the transforming and reforming rather than the forming or informing significance of cosmopolitan education. This trans/re-forming significance is attached to a critical positioning of the subject regarding the ethico-political responsibilities of one's home (-land, culture, commitments) that often go unnoticed. Doing one's homework is shown to be a precondition for a cosmopolitanism understood within the order of treatment of, rather than agreement with, the Other. (shrink)
The Egalitarian Conscience pays tribute to the highly influential work of Professor G. A. Cohen. Professor Cohen is a philosopher of international stature and tremendous achievement, who has been vital to the flourishing of egalitarian political philosophy. He has a significant body of work spanning issues of Marxism and distributive justice, consistently characterized by original ideas and ingenious arguments. The high standard of rigour he sets for progressive thinkers, particularly himself, has been a source of inspiration for colleagues and students (...) alike. -/- The volume honours Professor Cohen with first-rate essays on a number of significant and fascinating topics, reflecting the wide-ranging themes of Professor Cohen's work, but united in their concern for questions of social justice, pluralism, equality, and moral duty. The contributors are scholars of international stature: Joshua Cohen, Jon Elster, Susan Hurley, Will Kymlicka, Derek Parfit, John Roemer, T. M. Scanlon, Samuel Scheffler, Hillel Steiner, and Jeremy Waldron. There is an afterword by G. A. Cohen. (shrink)
In this paper, I examine arguments from Stephen Munzer and A. John Simmons and find that historical entitlement arguments for private property ownership are either too weak to justify poverty, as they must if they are to defend a property system wherein historical entitlement claims dominate, or they are subject to Jeremy Waldron’s “Proudhon Strategy.” I conclude that a general rights-based property system can accommodate the attractive aspects of historical entitlement arguments.
Ideal for survey courses in social and political philosophy, this volume is a substantially abridged and slightly altered version of Steven M. Cahn's Classics of Political and Moral Philosophy (OUP, 2001). Offering coverage from antiquity to the present, Political Philosophy: The Essential Texts is a historically organized collection of the most significant works from nearly 2,500 years of political philosophy. It moves from classical thought (Plato, Aristotle) through the medieval period (Aquinas) to modern perspectives (Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Adam (...) Smith, Hamilton and Madison, Kant). The book includes work from major nineteenth-century thinkers (Hegel, Marx and Engels, Mill) and twentieth-century theorists (Rawls, Nozick, Foucault, Habermas, Nussbaum) and also presents a variety of notable documents and addresses, including the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and speeches by Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. The readings are substantial or complete texts, not fragments. An especially valuable feature of this volume is that the works of each author are introduced with an engaging essay by a leading contemporary authority. These introductions include Richard Kraut on Plato and Aristotle; Paul J. Weithman on Aquinas; Roger D. Masters on Machiavelli; Jean Hampton on Hobbes; A. John Simmons on Locke; Joshua Cohen on Rousseau and Rawls; Donald W. Livingston on Hume; Charles L. Griswold, Jr., on Adam Smith; Bernard E. Brown on Hamilton and Madison; Paul Guyer on Kant; Steven B. Smith on Hegel; Richard Miller on Marx and Engels; Jeremy Waldron on Mill; Thomas Christiano on Nozick; Thomas A. McCarthy on Foucault and Habermas; and Eva Feder Kittay on Nussbaum. (shrink)
This paper attempts to develop an alternative to both classical liberal claims about individual autonomy and communitarian claims about cultural embeddement of the individual. It shows a way to develop a new model of subjectivity through an interpretation at the level of a deeply located, coherent self. This self is the core of personal identity as a pluralisticly structured, decentralized, internalization of Ego - Alter Ego relationships. This concept is clarified by a critical interpretation and reformulation of Jeremy Waldron’s (...) concept of cosmopolitan identities. (shrink)
