More than 50 years after it was first published, The Concept of Law remains the most important work of legal philosophy in the English-speaking world. In this volume, written for both students and specialists, 13 leading scholars look afresh at Hart's great book. Unique in format, the volume proceeds sequentially through all the main ideas in The Concept of Law: each contributor addresses a single chapter of Hart's book, critically discussing its arguments in light of subsequent developments in (...) the field. Four concluding essays assess the continued relevance for jurisprudence of the 'persistent questions' identified by Hart at the beginning of The Concept of Law. The collection also includes Hart's 'Answers to Eight Questions', written in 1988 and never before published in English. Contributors include Timothy Endicott, Richard HS Tur, Pavlos Eleftheriadis, John Gardner, Grant Lamond, Nicos Stavropoulos, Leslie Green, John Tasioulas, Jeremy Waldron, John Finnis, Frederick Schauer, Pierluigi Chiassoni and Nicola Lacey. (shrink)

This work presents, interprets, and largely defends the legal philosophy of H.L.A. Hart, except for his account of causation. Hart is considered by many persons to be the most important English writer on jurisprudence in the 20th century. The book considers his general theory of law, his theory of rights and of the enforcement of morality, and his analysis of the conditions of legal resposibility and the justification of punishment.

This festschrift collects a number of insightful essays by a group of accomplished Christian scholars, all of who have either worked with or studied under Hendrik Hart during his 35-year tenure as Senior Member in Systematic Philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, Canada.

Plato's Euthyrphro, Apology, andCrito portray Socrates' words and deeds during his trial for disbelieving in the Gods of Athens and corrupting the Athenian youth, and constitute a defense of the man Socrates and of his way of life, the philosophic life. The twelve essays in the volume, written by leading classical philosophers, investigate various aspects of these works of Plato, including the significance of Plato's characters, Socrates's revolutionary religious ideas, and the relationship between historical events and Plato's texts.

This collection seeks to excavate the tradition of radical liberal class analysis, which predated and inspired Marx's reflections on class. Liberal class theory is distinctive because it regards relationship with the state as constitutive rather than just indicative of social class membership. Along with an introduction that frames the discussion historically and conceptually, Social Class and State Power provides readers with easy access to provocative texts from the early modern period to the present.

When firms face crisis, the instant and open channels of social media communication create a double-edged sword. While corporations can more quickly communicate with stakeholders, any missteps will have drastic and nearly immediate repercussions. What are the relationships among social media, subjective norms, attitudes, and intentions during corporate crisis? We explore this phenomenon via a study of a crisis faced by Lowe’s, an international home improvement store, and how current and potential customers reacted. By utilizing a structural equations model to (...) examine an integrated model of multiple constructs, we find that Facebook usage is associated with behavioral intent, perceptions of ethicality, and attitudes toward the organization. Counter intuitively, we find that an increase in participant Facebook usage is negatively related to felt subjective norms. Our findings indicate that beyond the traditional relationships examined by the Theory of Reasoned Action (e.g., norms, attitudes, and behavioral intent), that social media and subjective norms have a strong relationship with general attitudes and ethical attitudes toward an organization. (shrink)

Hume's Principle requires the existence of the finite cardinals and their cardinal, but these are the only cardinals the Principle requires. Were the Principle an analysis of the concept of cardinal number, it would already be peculiar that it requires the existence of any cardinals; an analysis of bachelor is not expected to yield unmarried men. But that it requires the existence of some cardinals, the countable ones, but not others, the uncountable, makes it seem invidious; it is as if (...) an analysis of people required that there be men but not women, or whites but not blacks. If we deprive the Principle of existential commitments, it will cease to yield Dedekind's axioms for the natural numbers and so fail a good test of material adequacy. But since there are cardinals no second-order theory guarantees, neither can the Principle be beefed up to require all cardinals. (shrink)

This study is an unusual contribution to the philosophy of mind in that it argues for the sometimes unfashionable view of dualism: that mind and matter are distinct and separate entities as Descartes believed. The author takes as his point of departure the imaginative hypothesis of disembodiment, which establishes the possibility of the mind's being a quite non-material thing. There are clear casual correlations between what is physical and what is mental, and the most serious issue confronting dualism since Descartes (...) has been how such an interaction is possible. Dr Hart sets out to answer this question by showing that the issue is as much about the nature of causation as it is about the natures of mind and matter. (shrink)

Examines the relations between logic and philosophy over the last 150 years. Logic underwent a major renaissance beginning in the nineteenth century. Cantor almost tamed the infinite, and Frege aimed to undercut Kant by reducing mathematics to logic. These achievements were threatened by the paradoxes, like Russell's. This ferment generated excellent philosophy by excellent philosophers up to World War II. This book provides a selective, critical history of the collaboration between logic and philosophy during this period. After World War II, (...) mathematical logic became a recognized subdiscipline in mathematics departments, and consequently but unfortunately philosophers have lost touch with its monuments. This book aims to make four of them more accessible to philosophers, making available the tools necessary for modern scholars of philosophy to renew a productive dialogue between logic and philosophy. (shrink)

This book provides a distinctive account of Edward Said's critique of modern culture by highlighting the religion-secularism distinction on which it is predicated. This distinction is both literal and figurative. It refers, on the one hand, to religious traditions and to secular traditions and, on the other hand, to tropes that extend the meaning and reference of religion and secularism in indeterminate ways. The author takes these tropes as the best way of organizing Said's heterogeneous corpus - from Joseph Conrad (...) and the Fiction of Autobiography, his first book, to Orientalism, his most influential book, to his recent writings on the Palestinian question. The religion-secularism distinction, as an act of imagination and narrative continuity, lies behind Said's cultural criticism, his notion of intellectual responsibility, and his public controversy with Michael Walzer about the meaning and the uses of the Exodus story and about the question of Palestine. (shrink)

Keith Hossack's thesis is that knowledge is a conceptually primitive and metaphysically fundamental relation between a mind and a fact. He argues that in terms of the simple relation of knowledge we can analyze central notions of epistemology , of semantics , of modality and a priori knowledge , of psychology , and of linguistics . He does so in a framework that includes a fairly rich faculty psychology and that stresses causation: knowledge can be caused by belief, but because (...) knowledge is simple, it is not any kind of belief. He regards his enterprise as metaphysics, and he proceeds in a rather grand manner. The beginning of his Preface might remind one of the opening paragraphs of Leibniz's The Monadology.If knowledge is a simple relation between minds and facts, then we want to know a bit about facts. Hossack takes facts to consist in universals being instantiated among things. He favours a view of universals as respects in which things resemble each other , but his theory is at least officially silent about which universals exist, leaving that as a matter for scientific inquiry . But he takes metaphysics to be a science . Here he is being coy, and it is worth making out how. Hossack uses multigrade relations; these are relations of no fixed polyadicity that for any natural number n may be instantiated by n things. Vectors are bearers of such relations. The relation among working men of uniting to form a union is a multigrade relation, and the founders of the International Workers of the World are a vector bearing this relation. (shrink)

Transoral laser microsurgery applies to the piecemeal removal of malignant tumours of the upper aerodigestive tract using the CO2 laser under the operating microscope. This method of surgery is being increasingly popularised as a single modality treatment of choice in early laryngeal cancers (T1 and T2) and occasionally in the more advanced forms of the disease (T3 and T4), predomi- nantly within the supraglottis. Thomas Kuhn, the American physicist turned philosopher and historian of science, coined the phrase ‘paradigm shift’ in (...) his groundbreaking book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. He argued that the arrival of the new and often incompatible idea forms the core of a new paradigm, the birth of an entirely new way of thinking. This article discusses whether Steiner and col- leagues truly brought about a paradigm shift in oncological surgery. By rejecting the principle of en block resection and by replacing it with the belief that not only is it oncologically safe to cut through the substance of the tumour but in doing so one can actually achieve better results, Steiner was able to truly revolutionise the man- agement of laryngeal cancer. Even though within this article the repercussions of his insight are limited to the upper aerodigestive tract oncological surgery, his willingness to question other peoples’ dogma makes his contribution truly a genuine paradigm shift. (shrink)

D'après beaucoup de commentateurs de nos jours la théorie de Leibniz que dans toute vérité, le prédicat est continu dans le sujet, se base sur le Principe de l'Identité et méne vers Pessentialisme ou le supère-essentialisme. Ils prétendent que pour Dieu toutes les vérités peuvent ètre réduites à des identìtés explicites, tous les sujets à leurs attributs constitutifs, toutes les substances à des perceptions et des appétions. Cette reduction élimine “Celui Qui Contient” les concepts, le substratum persistant. Leibniz lui-mème vacille, (...) disant parfois que mème Dieu ne peut pas mener à bonne fin la reduction mais dois se fier à une “Vision” de la substance elle-mème, et à scs perceptions et appétitions. L'article present vise à examiner les idées rivalisantes offenes par Leibniz sur la connaissance possedée par Dieu des propositions contingentes et des substances créés. Il note aussi les consequences de les vues pour le pourvoir de contenir des concepts et pour Pessentialisme ainsi que pour l'individuation des monades et pour les sujets de jugements ethiques. (shrink)

Reedition of papers in English spanning from 1986 to 2009 /// Historical background -- An imposed legacy -- Twentieth century contemporaneity -- Appendix: The philosophy of teaching legal philosophy in Hungary /// HISTORICAL BACKGROUND -- PHILOSOPHY OF LAW IN CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE: A SKETCH OF HISTORY [1999] 11–21 // PHILOSOPHISING ON LAW IN THE TURMOIL OF COMMUNIST TAKEOVER IN HUNGARY (TWO PORTRAITS, INTERWAR AND POSTWAR: JULIUS MOÓR & ISTVÁN LOSONCZY) [2001–2002] 23–39: Julius Moór 23 / István Losonczy 29 // (...) ON THE SURVIVAL OF ILMAR TAMMELO’S LETTER AND MANUSCRIPT ADDRESSED TO PROFESSOR MOÓR [2009] 41–44 // PROFESSIONAL DISTRESS AND SCARCITY: ALEXANDER HORVÁTH AND THE LEGACY OF NATURAL LAW IN HUNGARY [2005] 45–50 // HUNGARIAN LEGAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE 20TH CENTURY [2011] 51–72: I. The Pre-war Period [1. Bódog (Felix) Somló (1871–1920) 52] / II. The Inter-war Period [2. Gyula (Julius) Moór (1888–1950) 54 / 3. Barna Horváth (1896–1973) 55 / 4. József Szabó (1909–1992) 57 / 5. István Bibó (1911–1979) 58 / 6. Tibor Vas (1911–1983) 59 / 7. István Losonczy (1918–1980) 60] III. The Post-war Period (Communism) 61 [8. Imre Szabó (1912–1991) 62 / 9. Vilmos Peschka (1929–2006) 63 / 10. Kálmán Kulcsár (1928–2010) 65] IV. Contemporary Trends and Perspectives 66 [11. Csaba Varga (b. 1941) 66 / 12. András Sajó (b. 1949) 69 / 13. Béla Pokol (b. 1950) 70] V. Our Understanding of the Law Today 71 --- AN IMPOSED LEGACY -- LOOKING BACK [1999] 75–94: 1. On Ideologies and Marxism in general 75 / 2. Life of an Intellectual in Communism 79 / 3. On Marxism and its Socialist Cultivation in Particular 82 / 4. Legal Philosophising [4.1. Approaches to Law 87 / 4.2. Arriving at a Legal Ontology 91] 5. Conclusion 94 // LEGAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE MARXISM OF SOCIALISM: HUNGARIAN OVERVIEW IN AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE [2003] 95–151: I. Development and Balance of Marxist Philosophising on Law in Hungary [1. Preliminaries (until 1948) 96 / 2. Stalinism (from the Soviet Occupation on) {a) Liquidation of the »Residues« 98 / b) Soviet-type Uniformisation [Gleichschaltung] 99 / c) Denial of the Past, with a Dual Effect 99 / d) »Socialist Legality«, Drawn from the Progressive Past of Western Europe 103 / e) Search for the Germs of Scholarly Evolution 103} 3. Institutionalisation Accompanied by Relaxation (from the 1960s) [a) Epigonism Becoming the Scholarly Ideal 104 / b) Stalinism in a Critical Self-perspective 105 / c) Disciples Diversified Launching their own Trends 107 / d) Comparatism 110 / e) (Re)discovery of the Western Legal Philosophy as a Competitor 112 / f) A Leading Mediatory Role within the »Socialist World Order« 114} 4. Disintegration (in the 1980s) {a) Attempt at Laying New Foundations for Marxism with Epigonism Exhausted 115 / b) Competitive Trends Becoming Exclusive 115 / c) Western Legal Philosophy Acknowledged as a Fellow-traveller within the Socialist Orbit Proper 116 / d) Hungarian Legal Theory Transforming into a National Corpus 118 / e) The Practical Promotion of Some Balance 119} 5. End-game for a Substitute State Religion (in the 1990s) 120] II. Marxist Legal Philosophising in an International Perspective [Ad 1: To the Preliminaries 122 / Ad 2: To Stalinism 124 / Ad 3: To Institutionalisation Accompanied by Relaxation {a) Late Separation from Vishinskiy’s Theory 125 / b) From Ideological Self-closure to an Apparently Scholarly Openness 127 / c) From Political Ideology to Genuine Scholarship 130 / d) International Recognition of Socialist Jurisprudence as an Independent Trend 135 / e) Together with Western Trends 137} Ad 4: To Disintegration {a) Loss of Attraction as Mere Epigonism 139 / b) Exclusivity of Competing Trends 139 / c) Fellowship with »Bourgeois« Trends 140 / d) An own Trend, Internationally Recognised 141 / e) A yet Progressive Role 142} Ad 5: To the Present state 143] III. A Temporary Balance 145 // AUTONOMY AND INSTRUMENTALITY OF LAW IN A SUPERSTRUCTURAL PERSPECTIVE [1986] 151–175: 1. The Strange Fate of Concepts 151 / I. A Relational Category 2. Basis and Superstructure: The Genuine Meaning 154 / 3. Exerting Social Influence as a Conceptual Minimum 156 / 4. Relationships within the Prevailing Totality 158 / 5. Attempts at Interpretation in Hungary 159 / 6. The Lukácsian Stand 162 / 7. Lukács’s Recognitions 168 / 8. Some Criticism 169 / II. The Law’s Understanding 171 / 9. Law Interpreted as Superstructure 171 / 10. Conclusions Drawn for the Law’s Understanding 173 // LEGAL THEORY IN TRANSITION (A PREFACE FROM HUNGARY) [2000] 177–186 // DEVELOPMENT OF THEORETICAL LEGAL THOUGHT IN HUNGARY AT THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM [2006] 187–215: 1. International Environment 188 / 2. The Situation in Hungary 190 / 3. Outlook I: The Historical-comparative Study of Legal Cultures and of the Lawyerly Way of Thinking 203 / 4. Outlook II: The Paradigmatic Enigma of the Transition to Rule of Law 207 / 5. Incongruity in Practice 213 / 6. Perspectives 214 --- TWENTIETH CENTURY CONTEMPORANEITY -- CHANGE OF PARADIGMS IN LEGAL RECONSTRUCTION: CARL SCHMITT AND THE TEMPTATION TO FINALLY REACH A SYNTHESIS [2002] 219–234: 1. Dangers of Intellectualism 219 / 2. Schmitt in Facts 221 / 3. Schmitt and Kelsen 222 / 4. On Bordering Conditions 226 / 5. With Kelsen in Transubstantiation 230 / 6. Polarisation as the Path of Theoretical Development 232 // KELSENIAN DOCUMENTS IN HUNGARY: CHAPTERS ON CONTACTS, INCLUDING THE GENESIS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY [2006] 235–243: 1. Preludes 235 / 2. The Search for Moór’s Bequeath 235 / 3. Moór’s Collegiality 238 / 4. Bibó as a Disciple Translating 241 // THE »HART-PHENOMENON« [2002] 245–267: I. The Hart-miracle 246 [1. The Scene of Britain at the Time 247 / 2. The Personal Career 250 / 3. The Opus’ Career 252 / 4. Verbal Sociologism 255 / 5. Growing into the British Pattern 259] II. The Hart-phenomenon 260 [6. Origination of a Strange Orthodoxy 261 / 7. Mastering Periods of the 20th Century 263 / 8. Raising the Issue of Reception in Hungary 365] // LITERATURE? A SUBSTITUTE FOR LEGAL PHILOSOPHY? [2007] 269–287: 1. The Enigma of Law and its Study 269 / 2. “Law and Literature” 271 / 3. Varieties of “Law and Literature” 274 / 4. The German Study of Artistic Representations 280 / 5. Some Literary Reconsiderations 285 / 6. Conclusion 287 --- APPENDIX -- THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING LEGAL PHILOSOPHY IN HUNGARY [2007] 291–320: I. Why and How to Philosophise in Law? 291 / II. The State of Teaching Legal Philosophy 294 / III. The Philosophy of Teaching Legal Philosophy 296 / IV. Programme at the Catholic University of Hungary 300 [1. Graduate Studies 300 {a) Basic Subjects 301 / b) Facultative Seminars 305 / c) Closing Subjects 309 / d) Written Memoranda and the Thesis 312} 2. Postgraduate Studies 313 / 3. Conclusion 317] V. Perspectives 318 /// Index of Subjects 321 / Index of Normative Materials 328 / Index of Names 329 . (shrink)

This volume is a collection of essays by various contributors in honor of the late Laurence Berns, Richard Hammond Elliot Tutor Emeritus at St. John's College, Annapolis. The essays address the literary, political, theological, and philosophical themes of his life's work as a scholar, teacher, and constant companion of the "great books.".

Quoique leibniz donne l'apprence de baser sa philosophie sur le principe de l'identite, c'est pourtant sur celui de la raison suffisante qu'il insiste le plus dans son oeuvre. ce principe de la raison suffisante joue un role majeur parce que leibniz derive sa conception de la substance d'une analogie entre le sujet et les attributs des propositions et les concepts de substance et leurs attributs. cette analogie mene a une theorie de retenue de la verite et a une autre qui (...) affirme que les attributs sont inherents a la substance: theories compatibles avec la raison suffisante mais non avec celle de l'identite. leibniz n'a ps compris la conception de la substance chez spinoza dans laquelle les attributs sont identiques a la substance. le raisonnement de leibniz contre spinoza n'est donc guere convainquant. je suggere que la raison de ce malentendu ne releve pas uniquement de la logique de leibniz, mais aussi d'une theologie basee sur une ame d'une immortalite qui persiste et sur la theorie d'une morale vengeresse. (shrink)

Earp, Lewis, and Hart make a comprehensive and compelling argument for ending the “war on drugs,” highlighting the importance of both ending the criminalization of people who use drugs, and...

In this work, Mercedes Rubio argues that St. Thomas Aquinas’s In I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3 is his final reading of Moses Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed on the topic of the knowledge of God. According to Rubio, this text reveals the influence of the Guide on Aquinas’s doctrine of the divine attributes, his understanding of the role of faith and his Five Ways.Rubio’s central thesis is most likely to be met with skepticism, since many scholars who (...) work on both Aquinas and Maimonides readily acknowledge Maimonides’ influence on the development of a number of Aquinas’s ideas, including the Five Ways. With respect to her central thesis, then, Rubio painstakingly reconstructs the history of the Quaestio, arguing that it was written around 1266, roughly fourteen years after the original Commentary was composed, and then inserted back in the Commentary on the Sentences. Rubio argues further that Aquinas wrote the Quaestio in order to respond to allegations against the writings of Peter of Tarantasia to the effect that. (shrink)

In this work, Mercedes Rubio argues that St. Thomas Aquinas’s In I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3 is his final reading of Moses Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed on the topic of the knowledge of God. According to Rubio, this text reveals the influence of the Guide on Aquinas’s doctrine of the divine attributes, his understanding of the role of faith and his Five Ways.Rubio’s central thesis is most likely to be met with skepticism, since many scholars who (...) work on both Aquinas and Maimonides readily acknowledge Maimonides’ influence on the development of a number of Aquinas’s ideas, including the Five Ways. With respect to her central thesis, then, Rubio painstakingly reconstructs the history of the Quaestio, arguing that it was written around 1266, roughly fourteen years after the original Commentary was composed, and then inserted back in the Commentary on the Sentences. Rubio argues further that Aquinas wrote the Quaestio in order to respond to allegations against the writings of Peter of Tarantasia to the effect that. (shrink)

The book provides a series of approaches to the ancient question of whether and how God is a matter of "experience," or, alternately, to what extent the notion of experience can be true to itself if it does not include God. On the one hand, it seems impossible to experience God: the deity does not offer Himself to sense experience. On the other hand, there have been mystics who have claimed to have encountered God. The essays in this collection seek (...) to explore the topic again, drawing insights from phenomenology, theology, literature, and feminism. Throughout, this stimulating collection maintains a strong connection with concrete rather than abstract approaches to God. The contributors: Michael F. Andrews, Jeffrey Bloechl, John D. Caputo, Kristine Culp, Kevin Hart, Kevin L. Hughes, Jean-Yves Lacoste, Crystal Lucky, Renee McKenzie, Kim Paffenroth, Michael Purcell, Michael J. Scanlon, O.S.A., James K. A. Smith. (shrink)

Tradition has it that ‘deuteros plous’, an idiomatic expression used by Plato most famously at Phaedo 99c–d, refers to the use of oars to get to one’s destination in the absence of suitable wind for sailing. The nautical motif is a gesture towards the seafaring credentials of Holger Thesleff, the scholar to whom the volume pays tribute, the author, most notably for this occasion, of three books and several articles on the style, chronology and metaphysical outlook of Plato’s dialogues, now (...) conveniently gathered together in a single volume, Platonic Patterns: A Collection of Studies by Holger Thesleff. But the expression also points towards the... (shrink)

This collection of reprinted social philosophy broadly surveys and introduces problems and positions vis-à-vis the concept of right. Using the tools of ordinary language analysis, M. MacDonald evaluates the attempts of other writers to resolve the tensions between civil and moral responsibility. H. L. A. Hart argues that "... if there are any moral rights at all, it follows that there is at least one natural right." His laudatory deductive exercise and categorization of rights suggests no leads for answering (...) the hypothetical he poses. While MacDonald and Hart raise no gut issues, G. Vlastos gives a common sense analysis of the main stream of classical debate, couching his inquiry in terms of conflicts between collective and distributive justice. His article both includes the scope and surpasses the stopping points of the earlier selections. Through leading to a philosophical discussion of the workings of the denial of human rights within the segregationist position, R. Wasserstrom unmasks the practical stakes involved in what the others leave as an academic problem. H. Morris's witty analysis of a hypothetical "right to be punished" lays bare the fact that social institutions embody some concept of right, duty, and obligation. He leaves the reader with the unanswered but clearly indicated question of which concept of right does one want society to sanction. Also included are: J. Locke's The Second Treatise of Civil Government, Chapters two and five; J. Bentham's Anarchical Fallacies; The Virginia Declaration of Rights ; Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens ; Universal Declaration of Human Rights ; and a portion of the Declaration of Independence of the U.S.A.--M. D. P. (shrink)

When I was asked to review this book, I thought it was to be a single essay, since the title gave no indication that the relation of David Lyons to the book was that of editor to a collection to which he also contributes. Most of the essays are so well known that no descriptive comment is necessary and no critical one adequate in a review of this length. The essays included are as follows: H. L. A. Hart's "Are (...) There Any Natural Rights?" and "Bentham on Legal Rights"; Rawls on "Constitutional Liberty and the Concept of Justice" which anticipates the central position of his A Theory of Justice; Richard Wasserstrom on "Rights, Human Rights and Racial Discrimination"; Joel Feinberg on "The Nature and Value of Rights"; Ronald Dworkin "Taking Rights Seriously"; Thomas E. Hill, Jr., "Servility and Self-Respect"; Robert Nozick, "The Entitlement Theory"; David Lyons's "Rights, Claimants and Beneficiaries" and "Human Rights and the General Welfare". David Lyons also has a useful introduction which raises and discusses the main points in the essays. (shrink)

The article presents the author's perspectives regarding the book "The Significance and Basic Postulates of Economic Theory," by Terence Wilmot Hutchison. He emphasizes two important general themes that emerge from the symposium in total, the great breadth of Hutchison's contribution to economic methodology and a brief introduction on the four individual papers. He mentions some people including Roger Backhouse, John Hart and Ross Emmett as well as the comments of each about Hutchison's works.

This chapter is an essay in a volume that examines constitutional law in the United States through the lens of H.L.A. Hart's "rule of recognition" model of a legal system. My chapter focuses on a feature of constitutional practice that has been rarely examined: how jurists and scholars argue about interpretive methods. Although a vast body of scholarship provides arguments for or against various interpretive methods -- such as textualism, originalism, "living constitutionalism," structure-and-relationship reasoning, representation reinforcement, minimalism, and so (...) forth -- very little scholarship shifts to the meta-level and asks: What are the considerations that jurists and scholars bring to bear in arguing that one or another interpretive method is legally favored? And can we "make sense" of this body of argument? Is there a model of legal discourse that both accurately describes how U.S. jurists and scholars actually argue about interpretive methods, and that vindicates this discourse (in the sense of seeing these actors as making valid arguments)? I find that Hart's rule-of-recognition model fails to describe or vindicate how U.S. jurists and scholars argue about interpretive methods. The problem, in a nutshell, is that Hart sees legal argument as asserting or presupposing the social fact of contemporary official acceptance of a rule of recognition. By contrast, jurists and scholars typically point to social facts other than contemporary official acceptance in arguing for the legal status of an interpretive method -- for example, the fact that the method is supported by Framers' intent, or by U.S. culture and tradition, or by precedent. Further, jurists and scholars very often argue that some interpretive method is legally favored even though the method is controversial. On Hart's model, such a claim is problematic -- because, on his model, the content of the rule of recognition is not controversial, but rather a matter of consensus among officials. The upshot may just be that Hart's model is a failure. However, another possibility is to adopt an "error theory" of U.S. constitutional discourse. It may perhaps be the case that U.S. jurists and scholars often make claims for the favorable legal status of some interpretive method that are inconsistent with the best understanding of the nature of law. (shrink)

This paper discusses the first incarnation of what came to be known as the “Frege-Geach” point. The point was made by Peter Geach in his 1960 essay “Ascriptivism”, and developed in “Assertion”, a 1965 piece. Geach’s articles launch a wholesale attack on theories of non-descriptive performances advanced by “some Oxford philosophers” whom he accuses of ignoring “the distinction between calling a thing ‘P’ and predicating ‘P’ of a thing”. One view that Geach specifically targets is H. L. A. Hart’s (...) claim that sentences of the form “X φ-ed” are not primarily descriptive but ascriptive of responsibility for actions. Hart explicitly accepted Geach’s criticism, and disowned his essay. I argue that he was wrong to do so. Perhaps the essay was worth retracting, but not because of Geach’s objections. I begin by restating and refining Geach’s arguments, in order to bring out the flaw he claimed to have detected in the “pattern of philosophising” that he took Hart’s essay to exemplify. I go on to argue that Geach’s original point poses no obstacle either to non-descriptivism in general, or to Hart’s sui generis non-descriptivist claim in particular. (shrink)

I propose and defend a proof-based account of legal exceptions. The basic thought is that the characteristic behaviour of exceptions is to be explained in terms of the distinction, relative to some given decision-type C in some decision-making context, between two classes of relevant facts: those that may, and those that may not, remain uncertain if a token decision C is to count as correctly made. The former is the class of exceptions. A fact F is an exception relative to (...) some decision-type C, I claim, if (i) the ascertainment of F is sufficient for a token decision C not to count as correctly made, and (ii) the ascertainment of the negation of F is not necessary for a token decision C to count as correctly made. I also recuperate, reconstruct and discuss some of HLA Hart’s early views on defeasible judicial decisions. These two projects are closely connected: the latter is a vehicle for the former. (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)

These are eleven previously-published essays, revised to varying degrees, on topics central in recent philosophy of action. As with most articles they tend to concentrate on points of detail, or particular disagreements with other writers, and despite an introductory essay which attempts to relate the issues discussed to each other, and to locate them in the general field of contemporary action theory, this will not serve as an introduction to the subject for the novice. Some of the essays are on (...) relatively minor, if still interesting, points: whether we can intend to do what we believe to be impossible; whether we can forecast our own decisions, as opposed to deciding in advance. One essay opens with the difficult but important question of how far the fact that a man cannot choose to do something means that he cannot do it, turns out to be a discussion of such incidentals as whether decisions can be accidental, involuntary, or dependent on authority, permission or special skills, as actions may be. Other essays usefully criticize the notion of agent-causality, and H. L. A. Hart’s account of strict liability, and they discuss the extent to which actions may be explained non-causally, and the extent to which our knowledge of our own actions is non-observational. (shrink)

One does not need to read many pages of this very rich book to realize that it is the fruit of a lifetime of study and that it is both speculatively wise and prudent. Though it may not receive the same degree of attention as other well publicized studies it clearly ranks with studies such as Hart's The Concept of Law and Erlich's The Sociology of Law. The author intends to develop a systematic theory of positive law, with close (...) attention to the circumstances that bring law into being, the purposes that law is designed to serve, and the structure of the legal system itself. He also proposes to apply this theory to an examination of the problems that law faces and the conditions that it must satisfy if it is to be an effective force in society. Nineteen chapters follow. Jenkins is aware that the study of law is but part of the larger study of society from which law receives its tasks and form. To determine the origin, end and functions of law is to search for those objective principles that define the conditions of man's well-being. While the first part of the book is concerned with the formulation of a general theory of law, the second explores the role of law in the social order and the conditions of legal effectiveness. Jenkins provides dramatic evidence that in our day, particularly in the United States, law is being employed for purposes that are unprecedented. "The legal apparatus," he writes, "is being asked to intervene in areas of social and personal life that have hitherto been handled by other agencies in other ways." It is the author's judgment that these nontraditional uses of law have for the most part been disappointing in their results. "We abuse the legal apparatus," writes Jenkins "because we have inadequate notions both of what the law is and how it works." Jenkins is convinced that law supplies the compelling social need for a force that is at once sovereign and principled. As sovereign it is entitled to habitual obedience and to the use of force when necessary. As sovereign, subject to no external control, it must be principled. It must govern itself by self-imposed provisions and mechanisms that determine the use of this power and prevent it from becoming autocratic and arbitrary. (shrink)

This packed record of proceedings of the 1959 meeting of the American Catholic Philosophical Association is dedicated to the memory of its first and recently deceased Secretary, Monsignor C. A. Hart. It opens with the convivial address by its President, Professor L. E. Lynch, the citation by M. Maritain for the award of the Spellman–Aquinas Medal of Rev. Dr. G. B. Phelan and the latter’s personal address on philosophical wisdom. Two other lectures range from the statement by Professor F. (...) H. Anderson of ‘Platonic Elements in Epistemology’ to Professor H. Spiegelberg’s outline evaluation of the subjectivity allegedly present in the contemporary method of phenomenology. (shrink)

Before he became infamous for character assassination disguised as literary executorship, Rufus W. Griswold established his reputation in America as a critic and early literary anthologist. In 1842, Griswold released the first edition of his massive Poets and Poetry of America with prominent Philadelphia publisher Carey and Hart. At nearly five hundred royal octavo pages—complete with elaborate frontispiece; ornamental title page with an etching by George Hewitt Cushman after Thomas Creswick; twelve-page, double-columned “historical introduction”; authorial headnotes; and selections of (...) verse from more than one hundred poets active in the roughly seventy years since American independence—Griswold’s volume was... (shrink)

Einstein, in his “Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper”, gave a physical (operational) meaning to “time” of a remote event in describing “motion” by introducing the concept of “synchronous stationary clocks located at different places”. But with regard to “place” in describing motion, he assumed without analysis the concept of a system of co-ordinates.In the present paper, we propose a way of giving physical (operational) meaning to the concepts of “place” and “co-ordinate system”, and show how the observer can define both the (...) place and time of a remote event. Following Einstein, we consider another system “in uniform motion of translation relatively to the former”. Without assuming “the properties of homogeneity which we attribute to space and time”, we show that the definitions of space and time in the two systems are linearly related. We deduce some novel consequences of our approach regarding faster-than-light observers and particles, “one-way” and “two-way” velocities of light, symmetry, the “group property” of inertial reference frames, length contraction and time dilatation, and the “twin paradox”. Finally, we point out a flaw in Einstein’s argument in the “Electrodynamical Part” of his paper and show that the Lorentz force formula and Einstein’s formula for transformation of field quantities are mutually consistent. We show that for faster-than-light bodies, a simple modification of Planck’s formula for mass suffices. (Except for the reference to Planck’s formula, we restrict ourselves to Physics of 1905.). (shrink)

Geoffrey Rose’s prevention paradox points to a tension between two prima facie plausible moral principles: that we should save the greater number and that weshould save the most at risk. This paper argues that a novel moral theory, ex-ante contractualism, captures our intuitions in many prevention paradox cases, regardless of our interpretation of probability claims. However, it goes on to show that it might be impossible to square ex-ante contractualism with all of our moral intuitions. It concludes that even if (...) ex-ante contractualism cannot furnish an entire ethics of risk, it does identify important considerations for any such theory. (shrink)

Geoffrey Rose’s prevention paradox points to a tension between two prima facie plausible moral principles: that we should save the greater number and that weshould save the most at risk. This paper argues that a novel moral theory, ex-ante contractualism, captures our intuitions in many prevention paradox cases, regardless of our interpretation of probability claims. However, it goes on to show that it might be impossible to square ex-ante contractualism with all of our moral intuitions. It concludes that even if (...) ex-ante contractualism cannot furnish an entire ethics of risk, it does identify important considerations for any such theory. (shrink)