Category Archives: Deontology and Moral Responsibility
Heidi Hurd, ‘Giving Moral Meaning to the Law’
INTRODUCTION With every set of congressional hearings over a new nomination to the US Supreme Court, fresh debate ensues over the legitimate scope of judicial discretion. On one side are those who fear that the exercise of judicial discretion constitutes a direct challenge to democracy and the separation of powers, and who therefore believe that […]
Ori Herstein, ‘Nobody’s Perfect: Moral Responsibility in Negligence’
ABSTRACT Given the unwittingness of negligence, personal responsibility for negligent conduct is puzzling. After all, how is it that one is responsible for what one did not intend to do or was unaware that one was doing? How, therefore, is one’s agency involved with one’s negligence so as to ground one’s responsibility for it? Negligence […]
Recently Published: Irit Samet, Equity: Conscience Goes to Market (OUP)
The book sets out to defend the claim that Equity ought to remain a separate body of law; the temptation to iron-out the differences between neighbouring doctrines on the two sides of the Equity/Common Law divide should, in most cases, be resisted. The theoretical part of the book is argues that the characteristics of Equity, […]
Oskari Juurikkala, ‘Law and Virtue: An Economic Analysis’
Abstract Classical virtue theory has received limited attention in economics. The paper demonstrates its fruitfulness for economic and legal analysis by linking the traditional ethical literature with modern law and economics. Virtues are interpreted as a theory of moral psychology, and applied to economic theory, with comparisons against other behavioral models in economics. It is […]
Maria Canellopoulou-Bottis, ‘Utilitarianism v Deontology: A Philosophy for Copyright’
Abstract The Anglosaxon copyright system is founded upon theories of utilitarianism, whereas the European system, generally upon deontology. A series of particular traits aid us at the identification of which theory a copyright system supports. For example, the management of the moral rights of authors and creators shows this difference very eloquently. In Europe, starting […]
Yona Gal, ‘Private Law, Public Right and the Duty to Rescue’
Abstract This thesis explores the normative framework of private law from the standpoint of corrective justice. After identifying problems in the classic model of Kantian corrective justice, it argues that these difficulties can be remedied by modifying the reliance of corrective justice upon Kantian legal philosophy. Further, by returning to an equality-based approach grounded in […]
Bohdan Petrovych Karnaukh, ‘Fault in Tort Law: Moral Justification and Mathematical Explication Civil Law and Civil Procedure’
Abstract The article has two main objectives: (1) to reveal why the fault principle is considered to be morally superior to no-fault liability in primitive law; and (2) to find out the essence of fault in modern tort law and then to express the concept of fault in the most precise manner possible, namely through […]
María Guadalupe Martínez Alles, ‘Moral Outrage and Betrayal Aversion: The Psychology of Punitive Damages’
Abstract Punitive damages have been predominantly studied from a one-sided perspective focusing on the wrongdoer. The role of the tort victim in bringing the punitive lawsuit has often been curtly described either as some sort of private attorney general moved by a desire to deter undesirable behavior (ie, playing a contingent role) or as an […]
Nicholas McBride, ‘The Defence of Illegality: Not a Principle of Justice?’
Abstract This paper criticises the common trope that the defence of illegality is not based on a principle of justice. It sets out three different understandings of what justice is concerned with – a moral, allocative, and political understanding – and shows that whichever understanding of justice one adopts, the defence of illegality can be […]
Stephanie Collins, ‘When does “Can” imply “Ought”?’
Abstract The Assistance Principle is common currency to a wide range of moral theories. Roughly, this principle states: if you can fulfil important interests, at not too high a cost, then you have a moral duty to do so. I argue that, in determining whether the ‘not too high a cost’ clause of this principle […]